The elected official is the subject of a preliminary investigation of the European prosecution opened in July 2021 at the request of the Bordeaux prosecution, on the basis of an anticor report.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
Sequisitions took place, Monday, December 5, in several homes and workplaces of the deputy for the National Rally Edwige Diaz, as part of a European prosecutor’s investigation for fictitious job suspicions.
“I confirm that there are searches in progress in two of my Girondin homes as well as the departmental permanence of the RN, to parliamentary permanence and my office in the assembly,” said Edwige Diaz , contacted by the agency France-Presse (AFP) after revelations of Mediapart and of liberation .
“The European Prosecutor’s Office has directed in France, since July 2021, a preliminary survey” for “embezzlement of public funds, complicity and concealment”, on the basis of “suspicions of fictional employment as a European parliamentary assistant” in “2018 and 2019, “said the prosecution in a press release. He said he was seized “in July 2021 by the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office, on the basis of a report from the Anticor association”, questioning “Jacques Colombier [ex-Elerefputé RN] and Edwige Diaz”, employed by the latter .
The survey was entrusted to the finance judicial investigation service. The deputy explained that Jacques Colombier had been placed in police custody and that searches concerning him had also been made.
“Political settlement”
“This is a political settling of accounts,” she said, saying that she worked well for Jacques Colombier “from April 2018 to June 2019” as local parliamentary assistant who “accompanied him on His trips, managed his social networks “and organized” visits to the European Parliament “. She challenges an “anticor manager” in Gironde, “David Poulain”, candidate for the municipal elections in 2020 in Ambarès-et-Lagrave, saying that the latter had requested an agreement to the RN for these elections, that the party would have refused.
“He uses an institution to settle political accounts,” she said, assuring that she was planning to file a complaint. “The report was made in April 2021”, told AFP Mr. Poulain, municipal councilor “without label”. “We had testimonies of activists, local officials of the RN and three co-elected of M me Diaz on the same list to the regional,” he said.
Regarding the statements of the deputy against him, he assures that “she tells anything, [and that there has never been an agreement or a proposal”. “She tries to discredit the file as much as possible.” This one “rises because there are settling of accounts within the RN after his choice of list heads to the regional 2021”, he said again .
The RN has been the subject of several investigations and indicted for suspicions of fictitious jobs of European parliamentary assistants in recent years, and denounces in return “political manipulations”. In March 2018, the European Parliament had evaluated its prejudice to 6.8 million euros.