2023-04-26 01:20:19
A pillar of the majority in court. Two Parisian investigating judges had ordered, last March, the dismissal of François Bayrou, as well as ten other people, in the case of the irregular employment of assistants to MEPs. The trial will take place next October according to a judicial source.
The trial is scheduled for October 16 to November 22 in Paris, according to a source familiar with the matter, confirmed by the prosecution.
François Bayrou, 71, current High Commissioner for Planning and close ally of Emmanuel Macron, will be tried for complicity in embezzlement of European public funds, between June 2005 and January 2017, as president of the UDF party then Modem.
Among the eleven people are also the former Keeper of the Seals Michel Mercier or the former MEP Jean-Luc Bennahmias. All are suspected of having used European funds to hire parliamentary assistants who would have actually worked, at least partially, for the party between 2009 and 2014.
The other defendants must appear mainly for embezzlement of public funds, complicity or concealment of this offense. For the investigating judges, if these alleged offenses did not cause “personal enrichment of the deputies or party executives”, they “benefited” the ex-UDF and its successor the MoDem by alleviating their payroll.
Bayrou strikes back
“Six years of investigation and investigation, so that, year after year, most of the charges disappear. Nathalie Griesbeck, Robert Rochefort, Mme Goulard, Maud Gatel and two years after her death Marielle de Sarnez are cleared of the suspicion of embezzlement”, reacted François Bayrou on Twitter at the time of the dismissal. “Only four or five contracts (part-time) dating from fifteen years ago remain in question”, that is “less than 2% of the payroll”, he had underlined.
The investigation began in March 2017 after the denunciation of a former elected National Front, Sophie Montel, on fictitious jobs of collaborators of nineteen of her colleagues from all sides. These revelations had weakened the MoDem, President Macron’s main ally, and led to the resignation of François Bayrou, then Keeper of the Seals, Marielle de Sarnez (European Affairs) and Sylvie Goulard, a month after their entry into government in 2017.
Similar investigations target the National Rally (RN), whose file is being closed, and La France insoumise (LFI).
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