He denies the charges. Guest of France Inter this Saturday morning, the Minister of Labour, Full Employment and Integration, Olivier Dussopt, firmly “challenged the idea of arrangement” within the framework of the investigation, opened in 2020 by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office in 2020, in particular for “corruption”, “illegal taking of interests” and “favoritism”. According to a briefing note addressed to the minister’s lawyer, only “a formal offense of favoritism in a 2009 public contract” was finally retained.
This PNF investigation will focus on the awarding of a public contract at the end of the 2000s to Saur, a water treatment group, by the town of Annonay (Ardèche) of which Olivier Dussopt was then mayor. As revealed by Mediapart, a search had updated “exchanges” between the elected official and the Saur “seeming to leave little doubt about the existence of an arrangement around a public contract dated 2009-2010”.
“A position of good faith”
“It is a thesis that I dispute”, he assured this Saturday morning on France Inter, adding that he was going to “explain how things happened” but that he reserved “for the investigators (his) answers on the background “. “I will continue to say that my position is a position of good faith” hammered the former mayor of Annonay again.
“Everything I did had one goal: to deliver on a campaign promise (municipal) and lower the price of water”, added the minister on the radio, affirming once again to have received “nothing” as an advantage.
In the process this Saturday, Matignon affirmed that the Minister of Labour, in the front line on the pension reform, had “all the confidence of the Prime Minister”.