Both parties are suspected of having diverted European public money for the benefit of other activities.
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The diverted use of European parliamentary assistants by several French political parties continues to fuel the judicial column. On December 17, 2021, as AFP revealed, the modem and its ancestor the UDF were indicted for “complicity and concealment of diversion of public funds”. A development that comes two years after the formal challenge of the leader of the party, François Bayrou, ephemeral Minister of Justice, indicted on 6 December 2019 for “complicity of diversion of public funds”. At this point, fifteen people, including the former seal guard Michel Mercier and the old MEPs Sylvie Goulard, Nathalie Griesbeck and Jean-Luc Bennahmias, are indicted.
The judges of the Paris court seek to determine whether parliamentary collaborators of the modem were paid by the funds of Brussels while they were actually assigned to other tasks for centrist training. The facts rise in particular to the European legislature of 2009 to 2014. Contacted, the lawyer of the modem and the UDF, Francis Teitgen, wishes to emphasize that “this case emerges at the time of the elections” and wishes to remember that it ” been launched for political reasons “. “She started following reports by Matthew Lamarre, who has since joined Anne Hidalgo, and Corinne Lepage about which it is not useful to make long developments on the nature of his relations with the modem”. M e Teitgen indicates that “it is acquired that there have been no fictitious jobs” and intends to “ask for additional investigations”.
1.4 Million Euros of prejudice
In April 2021, investigators from the Central Office to fight corruption and financial and fiscal offenses had delivered a very severe synthesis report. They estimated that the current judicial information in 2017 had updated “an old and more informal system aimed at using the European Parliament’s funds to allow the maintenance of the party’s activity and the level of remuneration of employees. of UDF-modem “.
“To make live your party and ensure its operation at a lower cost, François Bayrou and [Part Two Party] Marielle de Sarnez, supported by the party executives, have put the UDF serving the modem , parliamentary assistants paid by the European Parliament, “then indicated the police. “Whatever the method used, it aimed to make the European Parliament with the European Parliament”, they still wrote, then estimating the harm for the European Parliament to 1.4 million euros.
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