Bobigny (AFP)

The Paris Court of Appeal recently ordered that an investigation into the subornation of witnesses targeting Georges Tron be restarted, a few months before the trial on appeal of the councilor for rapes, we learned on Wednesday from a judicial source.

This case in the case focuses on the possible pressures suffered by witnesses of alleged sexual abuse of Georges Tron and his former assistant Brigitte Gruel towards two former municipal employees, Virginie Ettel and Eva Loubrieu. They accuse them of having imposed on them touching and digital penetration between 2007 and 2010.

The investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal overturned the dismissal pronounced by an investigating judge in this investigation on February 3 and ordered the prosecution of the judicial information, indicated a judicial source, confirmation information from the Parisian.

The Court of Appeal considered that "the term pressure in particular includes disguised threats, repeated and pressing requests, any means which results in creating a constraint on the mind of the person receiving them".

"The existence of a link of bribery between people must be taken into account," she also stressed.

"It is a very surprising decision because Georges Tron had not even been indicted in this case," reacted to AFP Antoine Vey, lawyer for Georges Tron, accusing the complainants of "media posturing".

Counsel for the former secretary of state also appealed on points of law against this judgment on February 7, but this action has no suspensive effect, said this judicial source.

"I think that these maneuvers of Georges Tron and his entourage were not for nothing in the way that some expressed themselves" during the main file, said for his part Vincent Ollivier, the lawyer for Virginie Ettel.

If the two procedures are legally separated, "obviously one has an influence on the other and vice versa", he added.

At first instance in November 2018, the current mayor LR of Draveil (Essonne), as well as his former culture assistant Brigitte Gruel, had been acquitted by the Seine-Saint-Denis assize court of the heads of "rape" and "sexual assault".

Their appeal trial will be held from April 21 to May 15 before the Paris Assize Court.

© 2020 AFP