Paris (AFP)
The mayor LR of Aix-en-Provence Maryse Joissains-Masini obtained on Wednesday the annulment of her sentence of one year of ineligibility and six months suspended prison sentence, and will therefore be able to appear at the municipal elections in March .
The Court of Cassation has not annulled the guilty decision pronounced against the elected official, condemned in May by the Montpellier Court of Appeal for embezzlement and illegal taking of interests, but has quashed the decision "in its only relative provisions to the penalties ".
The highest court of the judicial order therefore referred Ms. Joissains to the Montpellier Court of Appeal, otherwise composed, for a new trial.
The Court considered that the court of appeal had erred in law in pronouncing the sentence of ineligibility of the elected representative "on the grounds that it was compulsory on the basis of article 131-26-2 of the penal code ". However "on the date of the facts (...), this article did not exist and the additional penalty of ineligibility" provided "was only optional".
It specifies that "cassation will be limited to penalties, the provisions relating to guilt not incurring censorship".
After her conviction on appeal in May, the 77-year-old elected official had announced a recourse: her appeal in cassation, suspensive, had enabled her to announce in June her candidacy for a fourth mandate.
Maryse Joissains was sentenced for the improper promotion of a driver (since canceled by the Council of State) and the hiring in the community of communes of a collaborator in charge of animal protection when this field did not fall within the competence of this community.
The day after this conviction, she announced an appeal and then her candidacy, giving a boost to the battle for this posh city of Bouches-du-Rhône, a bastion of the right, but which the presidential majority can hope to bring down.
She had not ruled out the idea of alliances, except with the far right. "I do not criticize either Marine Le Pen or Marion Maréchal-Le Pen," she said, however, on France Bleu, refusing to "throw anathema or stigma" on the National Rally.
Mayor of Aix-en-Provence for almost 19 years, Maryse Joissains-Masini had succeeded the socialist Jean-François Picheral.
Her husband, Alain Joissains, had been mayor of the city from 1978 to 1983, and condemned in 1986 on appeal for concealment of abuse of social goods. Their daughter Sophie is assistant to the mayor of Aix and senator UDI of Bouches-du-Rhône.
© 2020 AFP