2023-10-16 12:04:43
François Bayrou, the president of MoDem, during the European campus of the Renaissance party, in Bordeaux, October 8, 2023. CYRIL BITTON/DIVERGENCE POUR “LE MONDE”
Just a few days before appearing before the Paris criminal court, François Bayrou had lunch at the Elysée. This Thursday, October 12, in search of“unity of the nation” after the Hamas attack in Israel, Emmanuel Macron gathered around him the leaders of the political parties. The other participants found the president of the MoDem concerned, as these long weeks approach when he will have to defend himself, until November 15, in the affair of the assistants of MoDem MEPs, opened more than six years ago years.
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François Bayrou and ten other centrist personalities (including former minister Michel Mercier and ex-ecologist Jean-Luc Bennahmias) are suspected of having misappropriated European funds to pay parliamentary assistants who would have in reality worked for the MoDem. The investigating judges considered that the party boss appeared to be “the decision-maker and person responsible for the implementation and operation” of this system described as “fraudulent”. A trial likely to hasten the end of the political career of François Bayrou, 72, and which could, in the event of a penalty of ineligibility, have cascading consequences, from the town hall of Pau to the European elections of June 2024, as well as ‘within Emmanuel Macron’s majority.
The Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, describes it ” concentrate “, “determined to defend themselves step by step”. “He has it in his head, which is constantly spinning”, testifies the MoDem deputy of Yvelines Bruno Millienne. In his no-frills office at the High Commission for Planning, near Les Invalides in Paris, François Bayrou, over a cup of tea, still refutes the existence of a system of financing the MoDem using European funds. He carefully read the 7,500 pages of the investigation file.
” Hurt “
A recurring guest on political shows, the most Parisian of the Béarnais reserved his public speech for The Republic of the Pyrenees, October 10. Through the departmental daily, whose headquarters are in Pau, François Bayrou says he is addressing ” those who [l’]have chosen for years to represent them »car “deep down, people know who their elected representatives are”.
The main defendant specifies in the same interview that he will not “no public intervention”not to ” interfere “ with justice. He instructed the Havas agency to ensure his communication and entrusted his defense to two lawyers: Pierre Cornut-Gentille, Penelope Fillon’s lawyer in 2017, is the brother of the former Les Républicains deputy François Cornut-Gentille; Pierre Casanova, son of the intellectual Jean-Claude Casanova, is also elected MoDem to the Council of Paris. MoDem elected officials will take turns at the courthouse to support their leader.
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