Since its creation in 1993, eight ministers and two secretaries of state have been sent to the CJR. But none was when he was still exercising his duties in the government.
Le Monde with AFP
Eric Dupond-Moretti, the Keeper of the Seals is summoned on Monday October 3 at 9 am, with his lawyers before the investigation committee of the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR).
The three magistrates who compose it will say to the Minister, indicted since July 2021 for illegal taking of interests, whether they have decided to refer it or not before the formation of judgment of this body, the only one empowered to judge Government members for crimes or crimes committed in the exercise of their mandate.
For the former tenor of the bar, appointed at the head of the Chancellery, in the summer of 2020, and renewed in this position after the re -election in May of Emmanuel Macron, whose relations with the magistracy are notoriously difficult, The decision does not make a mystery: he said on Tuesday that he “almost confused” to be sent back. His lawyers, M Christophe Ingrain and Rémi Lorrain, also said Friday that he had “no illusion on the sense of decision”. In this possibility, it would be a first for a Minister of Justice still in office.
raised at each procedural stage of this file, the question of maintaining the government of Mr. Dupond-Moretti, renewed to the Chancellery after the re-election, in May, of Emmanuel Macron, would arise again. “I have always said that I was holding my legitimacy from the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, and of them only,” said Dupond-Moretti on Tuesday.
two complaints against Mr. Dupond-Moretti
Eric Dupond-Moretti is accused of having benefited from his function, once at the head of the Ministry of Justice, to settle accounts with magistrates with which he had had a knit to leave when he was a lawyer, this that he disputes.
Passess of magistrates’ unions and the anti -corruption anti -corruption association, denouncing two situations of conflict of interest since its arrival at the Chancellery, had given rise to the opening of judicial information in January 2021.
The first file concerns the administrative inquiry he ordered in September 2020 against three magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF). They had peel his detailed telephone bills (“fadettes”) when Mr. Dupond-Moretti was still a star of the bar, with the aim of flushing out a possible mole who would have informed Nicolas Sarkozy that he was listening to the case of Corruption called “Paul Bismuth”.
A vice-prosecutor of the PNF, Patrice Amar, and his ex-patron, Eliane Houlette, appeared in September before the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM), which is due to make its decision on October 19. No sanction was required against them. The third magistrate implicated, Ulrika Delaunay-Weiss, was, for her part was whitewashed before any audience before the CSM.
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. Eric Dupond-Moretti had criticized his “cowboy” methods. The CSM decided on September 15 not to sanction Mr. Levrault, believing that “no disciplinary failure can be criticized for him”. A decision that sounded like a disavowal of the minister.
Throughout the investigation, Eric Dupond-Moretti repeated that “followed the recommendations of his administration”. An argument that has hardly convinced the public prosecutor: he requested, in May, a trial against the minister.
In this possibility, it would be a first: if, since its creation in 1993, eight ministers and two secretaries of state have been returned to the CJR, none was when it was exercised again his functions in the government.