Indicted since July 2021 for illegal taking of interest, will Éric Dupond-Moretti be tried? The Keeper of the Seals will know on Monday, October 3 whether or not he is referred to the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR). The Minister of Justice is summoned with his lawyers at 9:00 a.m. before the commission of instruction of the CJR.
The three magistrates who compose it will tell him whether or not they have decided to refer him to the trial court of this body, the only one empowered to judge members of the government for crimes or misdemeanors committed in the exercise of their mandate. The former tenor of the bar, whose relations with the judiciary are notoriously difficult, has already taken the lead and said on Tuesday that he had “quasi-insuranceto be fired.
New complaint
“Given the conditions under which the investigation was conducted, we unfortunately have no illusions about the meaning of the decision to be rendered on Monday.“, Added Friday to AFP the minister’s lawyers, My Christophe Ingrain and Rémi Lorrain. The two councils also indicated that they had filed a new complaint for violation of the secrecy of the investigation, deploring that “entire sections of the Attorney General’s final indictmenthave been revealed by The world Friday “in order to harmto their client, according to them.
Read alsoThe disciplinary hearing of a magistrate scratches Éric Dupond-Moretti
Raised at each procedural stage of this file, the question of maintaining the government of Éric Dupond-Moretti, reappointed to the Chancellery after the re-election in May of Emmanuel Macron, would arise again. “I have always said that I got my legitimacy from the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister and from them alone“, said Éric Dupond-Moretti on Tuesday.
At the heart of the case, suspicions of conflicts of interest: entered the government in the summer of 2020, Éric Dupond-Moretti is accused of having taken advantage of his function to settle scores with magistrates with whom he had had trouble from when he was a lawyer, which he disputes.
“Fadettes”
Complaints from magistrates’ unions and the anticorruption association Anticor, denouncing two situations of conflict of interest since his arrival at the Chancellery, had given rise to the opening of a judicial investigation in January 2021. The first file concerns the administrative investigation he ordered in September 2020 against three magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF).
They had had his detailed telephone bills gone through (“fadettes“) when he was still a star of the bar in order to flush out a possible mole who would have informed Nicolas Sarkozy that he was tapped in the so-called “corruption case”.Paul Bismuth“. A deputy prosecutor of the PNF, Patrice Amar, and his ex-boss, Eliane Houlette, appeared in September before the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM). No sanction has been requested against them and the decision of the CSM is expected on October 19. The third magistrate implicated, Ulrika Delaunay-Weiss, was cleared before any hearing before the CSM.
In the second case, the Keeper of the Seals is accused of having initiated administrative proceedings against a former investigating judge seconded to Monaco, Édouard Levrault, who had indicted one of his ex-clients. Eric Dupond-Moretti had criticized his methods of “cowboy“. The CSM decided on September 15 not to sanction Édouard Levrault, considering that “no disciplinary breach can be attributed to him“. A decision that sounded like a disavowal of the minister.
Read alsoCase of the fadettes: the pebble in the shoe of Éric Dupond-Moretti
Throughout the investigation, Éric Dupond-Moretti repeated that he had only done “follow the recommendations of his administration“. An argument that did not convince the public prosecutor: in May, he requested a trial against the minister. The Attorney General at the Court of Cassation François Molins then ruled that there were “sufficient loadsagainst him to stand trial. In this event, it would be a first: if, since its creation in 1993, eight ministers and two secretaries of state have been referred to the CJR, none have been while still exercising their functions. to the government.
SEE ALSO – Éric Dupond-Moretti indicted: “I am extremely calm”, assures the minister