After the minute of silence at the National Assembly on Tuesday, that at the Ministry of the Economy and in tax centers on Wednesday. Officials fell silent at noon sharp in tribute to the tax officer killed Monday during a check at a second-hand dealer, a potentially premeditated act which caused great emotion.
The Minister of Public Accounts Gabriel Attal, the director of the Directorate of Public Finances (DGFiP) Jérôme Fournel and several members of the ministerial cabinets of Bercy notably lined up in silence in front of a portrait of the killed agent. Despite the rain, dozens of agents from the Ministry of Economy and Finance were also present in the main courtyard of Bercy to pay tribute to their colleague.
This official had gone to the home of the 46-year-old second-hand dealer at around 2 p.m. on Monday, accompanied by an inspector “to carry out an audit of the accounts”. The trader then kidnapped the two agents before killing the inspector and then shooting himself, said Arras prosecutor Sylvain Barbier Sainte Marie on Tuesday. The victim, a 43-year-old senior public finance inspector, died of “several stab wounds to the back and chest”.
His colleague, 39 years old, is severely psychologically shocked. She was taken care of by the emergency services, before being auditioned. This act, which the Arras prosecutor believes could have been premeditated, aroused great emotion in public opinion and the profession.
Reinforcement of the rules?
Gabriel Attal, considered “revolting that a servant of the State, of the Republic, of the French can be (…) killed because he is doing his job”. “The Republic is mourning one of its own,” he said on Tuesday, after speaking for more than an hour with the victim’s colleagues at the Arras tax services.
VIDEO. Tax officer killed: investigation opened for “assassination”
Asked about France Inter on Wednesday morning, the minister announced that he would meet the public finance unions in the morning to “look at what can be improved or evolved in the organization of work, in the rules for controls”.
All public finance unions announced on Tuesday to suspend, out of respect for the victim and his relatives, their national campaign communication in the context of the professional elections which will take place at the beginning of December until Friday. “When the time has come after the necessary meditation, the trade unions will ask the General Management to analyze the conditions that led to this odious tragedy and the measures to be implemented so that such acts do not happen again”, specifies the union in a press release.
The victim, “a real team leader”
Gabriel Attal sent a message on Wednesday “to the 100,000 public finance officers who get up this morning thinking it could have been me” reminding them that “their work makes sense” and that without them “there would be no no public service. He described the victim as a “reassuring, supportive figure, a real team leader”.
The investigation, led by the research section of the Hauts-de-France gendarmerie, is open to the counts of kidnapping and murder, the prosecutor believing that the second-hand dealer could have premeditated his act. The ties used to tie the victim and his colleague, including clamps, “had probably been bought before the facts”, knowing that an appointment had been fixed for the control, detailed the prosecutor Sylvain Barbier Sainte-Marie .