The Paris prosecutor’s office requests that François Bayrou, president of the centrist party, and several personalities be judged for “embezzlement of public funds”.
by Samuel Laurent
Six years after the opening of a preliminary investigation, in spring 2017, the Paris prosecutor’s office requested Tuesday January 31, the holding of a trial before the criminal court in the case of European parliamentary assistants of the MoDem, A learned mo12345lemonde, confirming Information from the newspaper Les Echos .
In addition to the parties – the modem and its predecessor, the UDF – as legal persons, the services of the public prosecutor require the judgment of thirteen people for complicity in embezzlement of public funds and concealment. Among these personalities, the founder of the centrist training, François Bayrou, current high-commissioner at the plan, indicted since December 2019 in this file, and several executives, including the former Minister of Justice Michel Mercier, the former European deputies , Sylvie Goulard (who was also Minister of the Armed Forces), Nathalie Griesbeck or Jean-Luc Bennahmias, for which the prosecution requires a trial for “embezzlement of public funds”.
The affair bursts in the wake of the scandal of assistants of MEPs of the National Front (which has become a national rally, RN). Following an anonymous denunciation, the European Antifraude Wrestling Office (OLAF) has been investigating, since 2014, on the use by European deputies of the Marine Le Pen party of the credits devoted to the employment of employees. The Olaf considers that several contracts are used to remunerate executives from the far -right party without acting actually for Euroteputies mandates. Among the 17 parliamentarians implicated is Sophie Montel. This decides, in April 2017, to denounce to the Olaf and the French authorities other fictitious jobs concerning MEPs from other parties, including the MoDem and La France Insoumise.
As the investigators of the Central Office for Corruption and Financial and Tax Infractions (OCLCIFF) in their summary report will summarize in June 2021: the Modem has designed “an old and more or less informal system aimed at using the European Parliament funds in order to allow the maintenance of party activity and the level of remuneration of UDF-MODEM employees “.
” trap “
Concretely, MEPs must pay one or more people who actually work part -time for the party. An ancient practice, since the survey will show exchanges dating back to 2007, with reprints of meters unhappy to be imposed by their training the hiring of these fictitious assistants. In a 2011 note consulted by MO12345lemonde, the former MEP Bernard Lehideux thus wrote for the party treasurer, assuring that he “does not happen to anything” because “the European deputies were committed immediately after the last Elections (…) to devote a third of the endowment made available to pay their assistants, to wages and charges of employees working “together” at the headquarters of the modem and recruited from the home staff “.
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