After the sudden resignation, Monday, of the Minister of Territorial Communities, Caroline Cayeux, pinned for a possible undervaluation of her assets and suspicions of tax evasion, the last straight line of the ethical checks carried out on the ministers by the High Authority for the transparency of public life (HATVP) could make the government fear new disappointments. If the political class has become accustomed to these controls, instituted in the wake of the Cahuzac affair at the end of 2012, it is still a high-risk exercise for the executive.
But the HATVP validated, Thursday 1is December, the conformity of the declarations of interests and assets of the 41 other members of the government of Elisabeth Borne. The institution headed by Didier Migaud, responsible for monitoring the probity of senior public officials in France, was satisfied with the timely filing of statements by ministers, and their “speed” to react within the framework of the contradictory exchanges provided for by the procedure.
During these three months of in-depth verifications, the HATVP nevertheless addressed a significant number of observations to members of the government.
Many corrections, without serious anomaly
The vast majority of ministers (32 out of 41) have in fact been required to file a declaration of substantial modification to their declaration of assets or interests, in the majority of cases after comments from the HATVP on their initial declaration, filed this summer. Although significant, this proportion is comparable to previous years. Above all, the HATVP college did not identify any serious anomalies, which could have required public observation or, worse, reporting to the courts.
These rectification requests related either to missing information or, on the contrary, to an excess of information, although not mandatory. Five situations in particular caught the attention of the HATVP, giving rise to the most significant changes: those of Sylvie Retailleau (higher education and research), Dominique Faure (local authorities and rurality), Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo (organization territorial), Stanislas Guérini (public transformation) and Franck Riester (relations with Parliament).
Mme Retailleau notably had to revise upwards the value of the assets of a family SCI owning apartments and garages. Mr. Guérini was led to raise very significantly the estimate of his shares in a house in the Southwest, from 462,000 euros to 1.2 million. The property being held in bare ownership, without his having the enjoyment of it, the error did not harm him.
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