The two deputies filed two complaints, including one against X for “false and use of false” and “identity theft”, following the publication of an article from the “point” which wrongly accused them to exploit an undocumented maid.
Le Monde with AFP
An investigation for scam was opened on Wednesday, June 29, following the complaint of deputies Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière (La France Insoumise), wrongly implicated in an article from the point published on June 22. The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Thursday, confirming BFM-TV information .
The point of the point, written by journalist Aziz Zemouri, unduly accused the couple of having exploited an undocumented maid, which the two elected officials had immediately denied firmly. “Everything is wrong,” they said. Very rare fact, the article had been removed the next day. In an address to its readers, the newspaper admitted Tuesday that the article had “revealed false” and “false”.
“Sell a false story”
The two deputies, in the process, filed two complaints, including one against X for “false and use of false” and “identity theft”. The opening of this investigation is “a beautiful” step, which will have to seek to establish “what was the objective pursued with the creation of this false,” reacted the couple’s lawyer, Xavier Sauvignet.
The scam is the fact of deceiving a person – by the use of fraudulent maneuvers or by using a false quality for example – to encourage them to provide a service to the damage of a third party. For Mr. Sauvignet, the deceived person would be in this case Mr. Zemouri, the service would be the false article, and the third party, M me garrido. The couple also filed a defamation complaint against the journalist and the weekly.
Monday, the director of the point, Etienne Gernelle, said that the false information had been “invented” by stakeholders still unknown, then passed on by a journalist who had “melted a lead”. The point has opened an internal investigation, the author of the article was laid down and summoned to an interview prior to a possible dismissal.
The weekly estimated that it was an “external smoking”. “People have probably sought to sell a false story to throw discredit on Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière,” he written in the readers. He also explained that the screenshots of SMS allegedly exchanged between the false employee and M me Garrido, and published by the journalist, “constituted a coarse editing”.
Political dimension
According to Mr. Sauvignet, “the prosecution plans that there is a political dimension in this case” to “harm” M me garrido during the legislative election campaign. Tuesday, journalist Aziz Zemouri filed a complaint against Jean -Christophe Lagarde – former deputy and president of the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI), beaten in the second round of the legislative elections by M me Garrido – and against a police officer.
He claims that the policeman in question had contacted him at the end of May, before the legislative elections, to put him in contact with a woman claiming to be a household help, undeclared and undocumented, of the couple of deputies. This agent “would be detached from the town hall of Drancy” – whose mayor is the wife of Mr. Lagarde.