Paris (AFP)
The lawyers of François Fillon asked on Tuesday the Paris Criminal Court to reopen the trial proceedings of the ex-Prime Minister, whose judgment is expected on Monday, after the recent statements on "pressure" during the investigation, they announced to AFP.
"We have just seized today the 32nd chamber of the Paris Criminal Court of a request to reopen the proceedings so that recent events can be discussed between all parties," the defense said in a statement, after the former head of the national financial prosecutor's office Eliane Houlette claimed to have conducted the investigation under "pressure" from the general prosecutor's office.
This announcement by the lawyers of François Fillon, his wife Penelope and the former substitute of Mr. Fillon in Sarthe, Marc Joulaud, poses a major uncertainty about the rendering of the judgment, scheduled at 1:30 p.m. Monday, in this case concerning suspicions of fictitious employment of Mrs. Fillon.
Ms. Houlette, retired for a year, was moved on June 10 before a parliamentary commission of "very close control" that would have exercised the prosecution general, its direct supervisory authority, in the conduct of investigations launched in the countryside 2017 presidential election.
Friday, she clarified that these pressures were "not on the facts alleged against Mr. Fillon or on the merits of the prosecution", but "were purely procedural". "Mr. Fillon was not charged at the request or under pressure from the executive," she insisted.
His first statements, however, sparked an avalanche of political reactions criticizing the instrumentalization of justice in this ultra-sensitive affair.
And Friday evening, the Head of State Emmanuel Macron asked the Supreme Judicial Council (CSM) for an opinion to "verify that the National Financial Prosecutor's Office carried out its investigation" in all serenity, without pressure "from the executive .
"It seems to us that the questions raised by the hearing of the former prosecutor of the Financial Republic before a parliamentary commission of inquiry as well as the referral to the Superior Council of the Magistrature shed new light on the dysfunctions that we we denounced at the start of the procedure ", add Mes Antonin Lévy, Pierre Cornut-Gentille and Jean Veil in their press release.
Launched in the middle of the presidential campaign, the investigation had poisoned François Fillon's candidacy for the Elysee, beaten in the first round.
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