The public prosecutor’s office of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) requested, Wednesday, October 12, three years of imprisonment with probationary suspension for three years, against the former Minister of the Interior, Claude Guéant, tried before the criminal court for fraud concerning his campaign expenses during the 2012 legislative elections.
For his probationary stay, the prosecution asks him to justify his activities, to compensate the civil party (the judicial agent of the State) and to settle his debts to the Public Treasury.
At the time, the essential man of the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, now 77 years old, was a candidate to be a deputy in Hauts-de-Seine. The prosecution accuses him of having knowingly reduced his campaign accounts and thus having obtained a reimbursement of more than 30,000 euros.
“The probity of future elected officials begins with the probity of the candidates seeking the votes”said prosecutor Nathalie Foy. “Even if the sums involved are not considerable, this situation should not be trivialized” because she “casts discredit on political life” et “undermines public confidence in the casting of votes”, she said. Especially since in 2012, Mr. Guéant “was a very first man, an extremely powerful man”former secretary general of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency, then interior minister.
Against him, she also requested a fine of 50,000 euros and, for five years, the deprivation of his civic rights, the prohibition to exercise in the public service and to be a corporate officer.
A four-page letter at the heart of the investigation
In January 2012, Pierre-Christophe Baguet – UMP mayor of Boulogne-Billancourt and outgoing deputy of Hauts-de-Seine, who has since become Les Républicains – announced that he would support Claude Guéant to succeed him. In a letter to his constituents, he detailed the reasons for his support for the minister. This leaflet had been denounced by the dissident candidate, Thierry Solère, who suspected Mr. Baguet for having financed it in part with money from the municipality. Nicolas Sarkozy’s former right-hand man was defeated in the second round by Mr. Solère, now close to Emmanuel Macron.
This “greeting letter is actually a pretext letter” at “a propaganda document which will be distributed in 60,000 copies”, estimated the prosecutor, who accuses MM. Baguet et Guéant for having sought to have this letter financed by the town of Boulogne-Billancourt. What the two defendants dispute.
Mr. Guéant is the subject of other criminal proceedings. “I experience them very badly, I have the feeling of great injustices”, he argued on Wednesday. The former interior minister was found guilty on January 21 of favoritism in the Elysée polls affair. He was sentenced to one year in prison, including eight months. Mr. Guéant is also implicated in the investigation into possible Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign in 2007.