He entered the courtroom on Tuesday morning April 11 as mayor of Toulon, president of the Toulon-Provence-Mediterranean metropolis, surrounded by close collaborators. Hubert Falco left it Friday evening April 14 as a simple citizen and forced to immediately renounce his elective mandates, even if he appealed.
Overwhelmed, he did not say a word after his conviction for “concealment of embezzlement of public funds” to a three-year suspended prison sentence, the confiscation of 55,000 euros seized from his accounts and above all a measure of ineligibility during five years. By pronouncing the provisional execution of this additional sentence, the court abruptly put an end to the political career of the strong man of the Var for thirty years. He could himself announce his resignation in the next few hours, without waiting for the decree of the prefect of the department recording his automatic resignation from his mandates.
The president of the court Céline Ballerini justified this ax, despite the right of appeal, by a “duty to set an example”the duration of the facts alleged against the elected official, and his interventions to try to influence the course of the investigation with the Minister of the Interior and the President of the Republic. “This approach revealed by telephone tapping shows a disregard for the rules and a desire to escape certain realities”she explained.
“Continuation of a tradition”
Hubert Falco is found guilty of all the facts, committed between April 2015 and December 2018, on which he explained himself for three days: unpaid lunches taken regularly in the cafeteria of the county council when he was no longer presiding community since 2002, dinners which were prepared for him every day and even for weekends and public holidays as well as the provision of two employees of the kitchens of the department who received overtime for these “extras”.
And even supported laundry notes on the county council market. A “laughable expense”which betrays, according to the judges, “the pursuit of a tradition, in no way a right”. These misappropriations – estimated at 64,500 euros over three years for food costs alone – did not “not jeopardize the finances of the department”observed the president, before adding: “The question is not there. The county council was still your territory. »
The former president (LR) of the Var departmental council, Marc Giraud, 71, was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison sentence, a fine of 15,000 euros and ineligibility for five years, for “misappropriation of public funds”, on the grounds that he covered these undue advantages provided to Mr. Falco. The court did not pronounce the provisional execution, the defendant having been resigned last year by the prefect of Var in another case of embezzlement of public funds.
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