An investigation for fraud was opened on Wednesday, June 29, following the complaint of deputies Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière (La France insoumise), wrongly implicated in an article in the Point published on June 22. The Paris prosecutor’s office announced it on Thursday, confirming information from BFM-TV.
The article of Point, written by journalist Aziz Zemouri, unduly accused the couple of having exploited an undocumented cleaning lady, which the two elected officials immediately denied. ” Everything is false “, they said. Very rare fact, the article had been removed the next day. In an address to its readers, the newspaper admitted on Tuesday that the article had “turned out to be false” et “lying”.
“Selling a fake story”
The two deputies immediately filed two complaints, including one against X for “forgery and use of forgery” and “identity theft”. The opening of this investigation is ” a beautiful “ stage, which should seek to establish “what was the objective pursued with the creation of this fake”responded the couple’s lawyer, Xavier Sauvignet.
Fraud is the act of deceiving a person – by the use of fraudulent maneuvers or by the use of a false quality, for example – to induce him to provide a service to the detriment of a third party. For Mr. Sauvignet, the deceived person would in this case be Mr. Zemouri, the service would be the misleading article, and the third party, Mr.me Garido. The couple also filed a defamation suit against the journalist and the weekly.
On Monday, the director of PointEtienne Gernelle, had declared that the false information had been “invented” by speakers still unknown, then passed on by a journalist who had “Melted lead”. Point opened an internal investigation, the author of the article was laid off and summoned to an interview prior to a possible dismissal.
The weekly estimated that it was a “external smoke”. “People probably tried to sell a false story to discredit Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière”, is it written in the address to the readers. He also explained that the screenshots of the text messages allegedly exchanged between the fake employee and Mme Garrido, and published by the journalist, “constituted a rough montage”.
Political dimension
According to Mr. Sauvignet, “the prosecution considers that there is a political dimension in this case” pour “harm” to Mme Garrido during the campaign for the legislative elections. On Tuesday, journalist Aziz Zemouri filed a complaint against Jean-Christophe Lagarde – former deputy and president of the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI), beaten in the second round of the legislative elections by Mme Garrido – and against a policeman.
He claims that the police officer in question had contacted him at the end of May, before the legislative elections, to put him in touch with a woman claiming to be an undeclared and undocumented household help for the couple of deputies. This officer “would be seconded to the town hall of Drancy” – whose mayor is the wife of Mr. Lagarde.