Prosecuted for defamation by two ministers, "Mediapart" is released

The editorial staff of Mediapart.

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The

information site

, continued for an article from August 2017 pinning the holidays in Corsica of the two ministers Gerald Darmanin and Sébastien Lecornu, was released on Friday.

The current Ministers of the Interior and Overseas had lodged a complaint against the titles and the introductory paragraph of the article, entitled "Two ministers rent the villa in Corsica from a convict."

Two months after the hearing, the court issued its decision on Friday, ruling that the comments did not "damage the honor and reputation" of the plaintiffs, who were at the time respectively Minister of Public Accounts and Secretary of State to the Minister of Ecological Transition.

Sentenced several times

“Sébastien Lecornu and Gérald Darmanin rented a villa in the Ajaccian region.

Bad luck: it is that of the former president of the Ajaccio chamber of commerce, convicted of international drug trafficking, ”added the site.

The villa in question, north of Ajaccio, belonged to Christelle Godani, a former Miss Corsica who was the companion of Gilbert Casanova, ex-president of the Ajaccio chamber of commerce and convicted on several occasions, in particular for trafficking in cannabis. between Morocco and France.

The ministers immediately denounced an article which, according to them, "has (had) no other objective than to harm and to announce things formally inaccurate", insisting on the fact that they had rented the house via a site , without knowing its owners.

A question of title

On Friday, the court ruled that, "if the fact of designating Gilbert Casanova as an 'ex-drug trafficker' clearly damages the latter's honor and reputation, such a fact does not impute anything to the two civil parties, of which it is not even implied that they were aware of the existence of Gilbert Casanova and a fortiori of his judicial past ”.

The lawyer for the ministers, Philippe Blanchetier, reiterated to AFP that another title of the paper “was damaging the honor and reputation” of the civil parties.

“The court focused on the rental, when the title said they were vacationing 'with' a drug dealer,” he said.

The plaintiffs "were dismissed of their action against

because of the absence of defamatory nature of the remarks", welcomed the lawyer of the site, Emmanuel Tordjman.

"The court recognizes the right of

to publish information of general interest".

For the newspaper, this article aimed to reveal a "major failure in the system of protection of ministers".

• Defamation

• Justice

• Mediapart

• Gerald Darmanin

• Media