Paris (AFP)
LREM President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, is being heard Wednesday by justice in Lille in the real estate Mutuelles de Bretagne, AFP learned from his entourage and judicial source, confirming a information from La Voix du Nord.
"Mr. Ferrand is heard since this morning by the Judges institutes responsible for the judicial investigation of Mutuelles de Bretagne," said a judicial source.
After a first ranking without follow-up of a complaint from the association Anticor in October 2017, "we are witnessing the logical follow-up of the procedure, with a hearing currently taking place in Lille, where the file has been disoriented", said his entourage to AFP, stating that Mr. Ferrand "very serenely approach" this appointment.
The same source points out that "the second complaint lodged by Anticor, with the constitution of civil party before another jurisdiction, and then expatriated, bears on the same basis, for the same facts, without new elements and by the same plaintiff".
The Mutuelles de Bretagne affair had led Mr Ferrand to leave the government in June 2017. As soon as he was appointed Minister of Territorial Cohesion, he was pinned by the Chained Duck who revealed that in 2011 the Mutuelles de Bretagne, he was managing then, had decided to rent commercial premises belonging to his companion. Mr Ferrand disputes any irregularity.
The Brest public prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation in June 2017, dismissed in October. The public prosecutor's office then relied on the statute of limitations in the case of a possible offense of unlawful interest, and found that the breaches of trust and fraud were "not constituted".
First president of the group of LREM deputies, Richard Ferrand took over from François de Rugy as President of the Assembly in September 2018.
In the same month, three investigating judges were appointed in Lille to investigate the case of the real estate case, following a complaint filed by Anticor.
Asked Wednesday by the press after the Council of Ministers, government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye refused any "comment before knowing the subject of this summons".
© 2019 AFP