a training organization for local elected officials suspected of misappropriation of public funds for the benefit of the party

2024-01-11 17:21:08

For a long time, the training of local elected officials remained an obscure subject, only interesting them and the organizations which shared the tens of thousands of euros spent each year by the communities. The close proximity of some of these organizations to political parties – each with its own – now arouses the interest of the justice system.

The Center for Information, Documentation, Study and Training of Elected Officials (Cidefe), an organization close to the French Communist Party (PCF), is at the heart of a judicial investigation, opened in February 2020 at the request of the National Prosecutor’s Office financial (PNF), according to the information from Mediapartconfirmed by The world, Thursday January 11. According to a judicial source, the targets are “illegal taking of interests”, “misappropriation of public funds”, “breach of trust”, “abuse of corporate assets”, “bankruptcy by misappropriation of assets” and concealment of these four latest offenses.

Justice suspects Cidefe of having organized a system of financing the PCF, by recovering training credits from elected communist representatives from various communities by means of an expensive, because unlimited, annual training package. According to Mediapart, “for the year 2022, the municipality of Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis) has paid 23 packages at 1,000 euros. Still in Seine-Saint-Denis, Bobigny spent 30,875 euros to pay Cidefe packages to all its elected officials. Better still, the Greater Paris metropolis paid 25 packages at 2,292 euros for the elected representatives of the communist group for the year. A total of 57,300 euros”.

A report in 2017

However, these packages were rarely used – or sometimes not at all – by elected officials. According to Mediapartcertain elected officials from the Greater Paris metropolis have also benefited from two annual packages, under their municipal and metropolitan mandate.

This investigation finds its source in a report made to the PNF in 2017 by the Court of Auditors, following checks carried out by the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional audit chamber in Givors (Rhône) and Fontaine (Isère), two towns then led by communist mayors. A preliminary investigation was opened, first on facts ranging from 2011 to 2016, before being extended until 2020 – the practices observed by the regional chamber of accounts having continued. Several searches took place in 2018, 2019 and February 2022 in a regional headquarters of the PCF, as well as in certain Cidefe headquarters, specifies in Monde a judicial source.

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