Fake Garrido-Corbière affair: Aziz Zemouri files a complaint against Jean-Christophe Lagarde

Europe 1 with AFP 5:14 p.m., June 28, 2022, modified at 5:14 p.m., June 28, 2022

The journalist from

Aziz Zemouri, author of the article which implicated the couple of deputies La France insoumise (LFI) Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière before being withdrawn, filed a complaint on Tuesday for "breach of trust" against Jean -Christophe Lagarde and an ex-policeman.

The complaint was filed against the former UDI deputy and a former territorial intelligence policeman, Anouar Bouhadjela, known as Noam Anouar, whom Aziz Zemouri presents as the source of the false accusations against the two elected officials.

The journalist says "to have been manipulated"

Last Wednesday, an article by Aziz Zemouri published on the

website accused the couple of LFI deputies of having exploited an undocumented cleaning lady, which they immediately firmly denied: "everything is false", they had protested.

Very rare fact: the article had been withdrawn the next day and the director of Point Etienne Gernelle had recognized "errors and breaches of caution", in a message on Twitter and on the site of the weekly.

At the same time,

opened an internal investigation.

The journalist was suspended and summoned to an interview prior to a possible dismissal.

Thursday, the journalist said he was "convinced of the veracity of the facts".

But since then, he says he is convinced of having been "manipulated", as he said during a telephone conversation Monday with Noam Anouar.

In his complaint, he assures that the ex-policeman, "who would be seconded to the town hall of Drancy", whose mayor is the wife of Jean-Christophe Lagarde, contacted him at the end of May to put him in contact with a woman claiming to be the undeclared and undocumented cleaning worker of the couple of LFI deputies.

The journalist affirms that his informant called him "around the second round of the legislative elections" to ask him "if the article was ready to appear before the second round".

Aziz Zemouri replied that the article was "blocked at the level of the newspaper's management".

He has since specified that he had not yet written anything at that time.

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“They are trying to make me the ideal culprit”

Raquel Garrido, 48, was elected deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis against UDI president Jean-Christophe Lagarde in the second round of legislative elections on June 19.

In his complaint, Aziz Zemouri implicates the former deputy, arguing that when the controversy started, the latter had tweeted "comments" that the journalist had "only made to" the former police officer on the alleged item blocking.

Jean-Christophe Lagarde's tweet has since been deleted.

Asked by AFP, the former MP could not be reached immediately.

In a video posted on his Facebook page, Noam Anouar categorically denied the accusations of the journalist from Le Point and being "the author of the plot" targeting the two elected officials.

"They are trying to make me the ideal culprit in the Corbière-Garrido affair", he regretted.