2023-11-05 15:00:13
The trial of Eric Dupond-Moretti opens, Monday, November 6, before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), a first for a minister in office before this exceptional jurisdiction, created specially to judge the members of the French government for crimes and offenses committed in the exercise of their functions.
Famous criminal lawyer who became Minister of Justice on July 6, 2020, Mr. Dupond-Moretti must respond to accusations of illegal taking of interests formulated by the magistrates of the investigating commission of the CJR, following a long investigation. He is accused of having attempted to obtain disciplinary sanctions against four magistrates who had investigated his clients or his relatives in two separate cases, using his ministerial position to his advantage.
Read the investigation: Article reserved for our subscribers What the investigating committee of the Court of Justice of the Republic criticizes Eric Dupond-Moretti
The case of Judge Levrault, in Monaco
The first case concerns Edouard Levrault. Seconded in 2016 to the principality of Monaco, this investigating judge investigated several sensitive cases and indicted influential figures in the context of a corruption case: Russian billionaire Dmitri Rybolovlev, president of the Monaco football club ‘AS Monaco, Christophe Haget, the head of the Monegasque judicial police, and Philippe Narmino, the equivalent of the Monegasque minister of justice.
Judge Levrault was not reappointed in his position in 2019 at the request of Philippe Narmino’s successor, who complained to the French government that the judge « with [permette] to cast suspicion on all kinds of people” et « [souhaite] investigate inside the palace [princier de Monaco] ».
Questioned by the program “Pieces à conviction” on France 3, on June 10, 2020, Judge Levrault is, in return, not kind to the complacency of the Monegasque justice system, like several French judges who have served in the principality . The magistrate suggests that he was dismissed for having implicated Dmitri Rybolovlev and Christophe Haget in his investigations. Lawyer for the two men, Eric Dupond-Moretti does not appreciate these criticisms at all and two days later describes the judge as « cow-boy » in a daily interview Monaco-Morning. Christophe Haget announces, for his part, to file a complaint for violation of the secrecy of the investigation and requests referral to the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM) to sanction the “failures” of the judge.
However, on July 6, 2020, Eric Dupond-Moretti was chosen by Emmanuel Macron to become minister of justice. The appointment as head of the French judiciary of a lawyer involved in numerous high-profile cases places him in a de facto situation of conflict of interest, which raises the concerns of many actors in the judicial institution.
On July 31, 2020, Mr. Dupond-Moretti’s chief of staff, Véronique Malbec, ordered the General Inspectorate of Justice (IGJ) to launch an administrative investigation into Edouard Levrault, covering both his comments in the France 3 broadcast and on the conduct of its investigations in Monaco. The decision is strongly criticized by the magistrates and pushes the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, to issue, in the fall of 2020, two “deportation” decrees supposed to prevent the Keeper of the Seals from getting involved in all matters “of which he was the lawyer or in which he was involved”.
Referred to the CSM at the end of this administrative investigation by Castex himself in September 2021, the judge was finally cleared a year later: the disciplinary body of magistrates considered that he had not been guilty of no dereliction of duty.
In the meantime, the case turned against Eric Dupond-Moretti. The CSM criticized him for placing himself “in an objective situation of conflict of interest” by ordering the investigation against the judge, even though he was involved in the case a month before. If the minister tried during the CJR investigation to minimize his role in the disciplinary proceedings initiated against the magistrate, the investigating committee, on the contrary, considered that the minister did not stay away from his old files, as provided for in the deportation decrees. The judges documented multiple meetings between the minister and the key protagonists in the Levrault affair:
He received his former associate Antoine Vey at the ministry thirteen times. He had dinner with two senior figures from Monaco on October 23, 2020, the same day of the first deportation decree. He had lunch with the general prosecutor of Nîmes who had received the complaint against Judge Levrault, who sent him a report a week after the deportation decree.
The CJR investigating committee therefore considers that Mr. Dupond-Moretti actively sought to use his prerogatives in order to sanction an anti-corruption judge who was investigating his clients.
The summary of Judge Levrault’s case
The case of disciplinary proceedings against the PNF
The second case for which the Minister of Justice will be judged falls into the same pattern. It concerns three judges from the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), a section of the Paris court specializing in economic and financial delinquency created at the end of 2013, after the scandal caused by the Cahuzac affair.
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The case began in early 2014: in the midst of an investigation into suspicions of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s first presidential campaign, judges wiretapped the former president on a discreet telephone line opened in the name of Paul Bismuth by his lawyer, Me. Thierry Herzog. But the police quickly understand that someone has warned those concerned about these wiretappings. The PNF then opens an investigation (called “306”) with the aim of identifying the source of these leaks. In this context, the police officers go through the detailed (fad) billings of twenty telephone lines linked to the protagonists, including those of Eric Dupond-Moretti, a close friend of Me Herzog.
When he discovered, in June 2020, after the revelations of Pointthat his telephone contacts were examined, the lawyer loses his temper against the “barbouze methods” employed by “a clique of judges who allow themselves everything”and announced, on June 30, 2020, to file a complaint for “violation of the intimacy of private life and the secrecy of correspondence” and “abuse of authority”.
The next day, the Minister of Justice, Nicole Belloubet, asked the IGJ to look into the PNF’s “306” investigation. But six days later, Eric Dupond-Moretti succeeded him as chancellor, therefore becoming the hierarchical superior of the prosecution against whom he filed a complaint – which immediately drew strong criticism of his situation. To calm the concerns expressed by the magistrates, Mr. Dupond-Moretti withdrew his complaint on July 14, 2020.
Two months later, on September 15, 2020, the IGJ issued its report, which highlighted management problems at the PNF, while emphasizing that the “306” investigation was perfectly legal and that the magistrates were concerned “not to excessively expose the private life or professional secrecy of the holders of the lines operated”. Such an operational inspection aims only to audit the quality of the organization of a service, but in no case to point out individual responsibilities. In theory, the investigation into the PNF should therefore have only been followed by reforms to the organization of the prosecution.
But to everyone’s surprise, Eric Dupond-Moretti’s chief of staff ordered administrative investigations on September 18, 2020 against the boss of the PNF, Eliane Houlette, and two of the seven judges in charge of the “306” investigation, Ulrika Delaunay- Weiss and Patrice Amar. In an unprecedented move, the minister publicly cites the names of the three magistrates targeted in a press release, which shocks the judiciary and violates the secrecy of the administrative investigation.
Read the investigation: Article reserved for our subscribers The dark behind the scenes of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office
Mr. Dupond-Moretti and Ms. Malbec deny having wanted to obtain unfounded sanctions against these magistrates, but the CJR investigation shows the opposite: the day before the official reception of the IGJ report, the minister instructed a senior official from the ministry to assess the report and draft the mission letter justifying the launch of three administrative investigations. The next day, Eric Dupond-Moretti told Sophie Rey, the general secretary of the CSM, that he intended to contact the Council to sanction the magistrates, even before the administrative investigations began.
In fact, Jean Castex subsequently referred Eliane Houlette and Patrice Amar to the CSM, even though the IGJ report concluded that they had “acted within the law”. The hearings conducted by the CJR showed that the Prime Minister’s office intervened with the Directorate of Judicial Services (DSJ) to refer Eliane Houlette before the CSM, contrary to the analysis of the DSJ for which none of the magistrates should be prosecuted. The referral of Amar to the disciplinary was, for its part, decided unilaterally by Matignon, who freed himself from the recommendations of both the IGJ and the DSJ.
The final decision of the CSM proved Jean Castex and Eric Dupond-Moretti wrong by clearing, on October 19, 2022, the two magistrates, who did not “committed no disciplinary offense”, believing that he “is not applicable” to sanction them.
As in the Levrault case, this affair turned against Eric Dupond-Moretti. For these two cases, the minister was indicted on July 16, 2021 for “illegal taking of interests”, before being sent to trial on October 3, 2022.
The summary of the PNF case
The hearing, which opens Monday, November 6, is expected to last until November 17. The minister faces five years in prison, a fine of 500,000 euros and an additional penalty of ineligibility. He will be judged by a panel of three professional magistrates, six deputies and six senators.
Read our decryption: What is the Court of Justice of the Republic?
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