In an article in Le Point, the deputies (France insoumise) Alexis Corbière and Raquel Garrido are accused of having employed a housekeeper in an irregular situation for a year, and of having exploited her situation for their benefit. An accusation that would stain, if true, for those who claimed as Alexis Corbiere, that it is “necessary to regularize” the “workers who are here”. “Undeclared work drags everyone down,” insisted the MP.
It was a police check carried out in May, during which the domestic worker “could only present her Algerian passport”, indicates the article by Aziz Zemouri, which broke the case. Housed by the couple of deputies, she would work both at their home in Bagnolet and in Parisian accommodation for their children. His employers would have dangled him with papers in the event of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s accession to the Élysée or to Matignon. Remuneration of “150 euros for the week”, and unwelcome messages, letting her clearly understand that her situation is to take it or leave it, and that if she is not satisfied with it, she can leave, are revealed by the Point.
The elected officials of Seine-Saint-Denis had already been implicated in 2017 for the occupation of social housing of 80 square meters in the 12th arrondissement in Paris. A practice which was not prohibited to them, but contravened the tacit rule of the RIVP (Real estate agency of the city of Paris) which asks elected officials not to live in social housing. Only Alexis Corbière was then a deputy, but the couple had therefore been asked to leave this accommodation.
The two LFI deputies strongly denied these new accusations. “We haven’t had a housekeeper for years,” Raquel Garrido replied to Le Point. “We recruited help during the election campaigns. Each time with people with papers, and of course with the related Urssaf declarations.”
Alexis Corbière reacted virulently to the publication of the article:
My response to the untruthful article in Le Point: Everything is false! pic.twitter.com/3smf2yVCwC
— Alexis Corbiere (@alexiscorbiere) June 22, 2022
This accusation falls all the more badly as rebellious France has in its ranks a new deputy with an unusual career in the hemicycle: Rachel Keke, a figure of the chambermaids of the Ibis Batignolles hotel, during their strike movement of 22 months between 2019 and 2021.