Thousands of dollars spent on clothes, lingerie, and beach and seaside getaways at taxpayer expense. The deputy president of the LREM group in the National Assembly, Coralie Dubost, was pinned for inappropriate expense reports, according to a Mediapart investigation published on Friday.
The member for the third constituency of Hérault would have multiplied the astronomical expenses in 2018 and 2019, by dipping into her envelope of costs allocated by the Assembly. This envelope of 5,373 euros is, initially, intended to settle various expenses related exclusively to the function of the elected official. However, the examination of Coralie Dubost’s mandate expenses revealed a certain number of purchases “which did not fall within the scope” of the authorized expenses. These have since “been regularized”, assured the elected official to Mediapart.
“I’m not a cheater”
According to the MP, her former collaborator would have simply “badly advised” “I was stupid (…), I am not a cheater”, she defended herself to the online investigation site. His expenses were raised following an internal investigation launched by the anti-harassment cell of the National Assembly, after a “collective alert” launched by some of his former collaborators. Problems of suffering at work have thus been pointed out, as has inappropriate management of public money.
The expenses involved would be astronomical: Coralie Dubost faced an overdraft exceeding 7,000 euros at the start of 2019. The representative of En Marche thus had to “take out a personal loan” to settle her slate. These costs included in particular “monthly clothing expenses within a range of 1,500 to 2,000 euros”, according to the report, finalized in April 2021, consulted by Mediapart. The elected official would, for example, have used more than 500 euros of public money in lingerie purchases. In October 2018, she would have even spent more than 3,300 euros on clothes, in particular on online sales sites.
bills by the sea
“There are mandate outfits and personal outfits (…), I do not put the same things in my personal life and in my mandate life”, justified the deputy. Other problematic costs are those spent on leisure spaces. The deputy for Hérault thus settled a bill of 194 euros at Bonaventure, a restaurant on the beach, in Pavalas-les-Flots.
Other costs also relate to reservations in a 5-star establishment, located by a swimming pool in the Verchant area. Purely professional appointments, she justified. “I made several mandate appointments there”, she explained, also referring to “working times as well as team building as a team”. In addition to his expenses, some of his collaborators mentioned “inappropriate requests” made by their superior: performing domestic chores at home, bringing his belongings to the dry cleaners, having personal purchases delivered…
After the submission of a report detailing these facts in the spring of 2021, Coralie Dubost would have been summoned by the ethics officer of the National Assembly, Christophe Pallez, but no follow-up would however have been given to this meeting. Contacted by Mediapart, the presidency of the Assembly only indicated, for reasons of confidentiality, that it was not “aware of the reports made by the cell [anti-harcèlement] ».