Nanterre (AFP)

MEP LREM Thierry Solère was indicted Friday especially for tax evasion, embezzlement of public funds and trading in influence, said in a statement the prosecutor of the Republic of Nanterre.

The indictment concerns the offenses of tax evasion, embezzlement of public funds by depositary of the public authority, concealment of breach of professional secrecy, trading in influence with respect to four companies, concealment of abuse of social good, concealment of property rights. breach of trust, illegal financing of election campaigns, covering a period between 2003 and 2017, said the prosecutor Catherine Denis.

Thierry Solère, a close friend of Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, has also been placed under the status of assisted witness for breaches of reporting obligations to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life and Passive Influence on a fifth person. society.

The elected Hauts-de-Seine was heard for five days by the three magistrates investigating this case since February 1, said the release.

He had been the subject of a preliminary inquiry since September 2016, for facts dating back to the period when he was General Counsel of the Hauts-de-Seine then MP and while still belonging to the LR family.

The case began in 2016 with a complaint by Bercy for tax evasion, entrusted to the Central Office of fight against corruption and financial and fiscal offenses. Mr. Solère was then spokesman of the candidate LR to the presidential François Fillon, after having organized the primary of the right and the center.

Mr. Solère is suspected by the investigators of having used his position of elected to favor certain companies for which he worked as an adviser, so that they obtain public contracts. The hiring of the wife of a former head of one of these companies as a parliamentary assistant is also of interest to the investigators.

The member has always challenged the facts.

His lawyers could not be reached by AFP on Friday night.

For having transmitted in 2017 to Mr. Solère elements of this investigation while he was Minister of Justice, the former Socialist Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas was sentenced in late September to one month suspended sentence and 5,000 euros of amended by the Court of Justice of the Republic for "breach of professional secrecy".

Elected as deputy in 2012, 48-year-old Thierry Solère had quit the LR campaign at the start of the Fillon affair and, after his re-election in 2017, he had created alongside Franck Riester the group of "Constructives" before joining LREM a few months later.

© 2019 AFP