The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) announced that it had requested the referral to the court of the current Keeper of the Seals, suspected of having taken advantage of his function to settle his accounts with magistrates.
Le Monde with AFP
The Dupond-Moretti affair could translate before the courts. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) announced, Tuesday, May 10, to have requested the referral to the court of the current Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, indicted for “illegal taking of Interests “.
The former lawyer is suspected of having taken advantage of his function to settle accounts with magistrates with whom he had had a knit to leave when he was advice in two files, which he denies. According to a press release from the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of Cassation, the public prosecutor judged that there were “sufficient charges” against the minister to send him back to trial.
“Barbouzes” methods
The CJR investigation committee, the only jurisdiction authorized to continue and judge the members of the government for crimes and crimes committed “in the exercise of their functions”, opened in January 2021 judicial information for ” illegal taking of interest “after having judged admissible the complaints of three magistrates unions and the anticor association denouncing situations of conflict of interest in two files.
A first file concerns the administrative inquiry ordered in September 2020 by the Keeper of the Seals against three magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) who had peel his detailed telephone statements (Fadettes) when he was still a court of courts. The PNF then sought to flush out a taupe having been able to inform Nicolas Sarkozy and his advice Thierry Herzog – a friend of Mr. Dupond -Moretti – that they were listening in the case of so -called “Paul Bismuth”, a pseudonym used by the ‘former head of state to use a telephone line distinct from that in name. Viliantly what he had described as “barbouzes” methods “of the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, Mr. Dupond-Moretti had filed a complaint, before withdrawing it at the evening of his appointment as Keeper of the Seals, on July 6, 2020.
In the second file, the Keeper of the Seals is accused of having diligent administrative proceedings against a former investigating judge detached in Monaco, Edouard Levrault, who had indicted one of his ex-clients and whose M . Dupond-Moretti had criticized the methods of “cowboy” after this magistrate had spoke in a report.
m. Dupond-Moretti has always defended itself from any illegal takeover of interests, arguing that he had only “followed the recommendations” of his administration. The potential conflicts of interest of the new Keeper of the Seals had however led to the leaving for the follow -up of his old cases, passed under the control of Matignon at the end of October 2020.