Paris (AFP)

The Paris Court of Appeal on Tuesday ordered the resumption of investigations into a rape charge in 2009 targeting the Minister of Public Accounts Gérald Darmanin, AFP learned Thursday from concordant sources.

The investigating chamber of the court of appeal did not follow the requisitions of the general prosecutor's office and considered, according to a judicial source, that the investigating judge "could not be based solely on the results of the preliminary investigation "to refuse on August 16, 2018 to relaunch the investigations in this case.

"It is therefore not a difference of opinion on the charges," it was said from the same source.

The investigating chamber was ordered, by a decision of the Court of Cassation in November 2019, to reconsider the validity of this dismissal which had benefited in August 2018 Mr. Darmanin, accused by a woman of rape , sexual harassment and breach of trust via a complaint with the creation of a civil party dating from February 2018.

This step followed the classification without continuation by the parquet floor, decided at the end of a preliminary investigation during which the Minister had been interviewed, without being confronted with his accuser.

In August 2018, the magistrate had issued a "non-place to inform order", finding that in light of these investigations, the alleged facts were not made up and that there was no need to open a judicial information.

The appeal brought by the complainant, Sophie Patterson-Spatz, had been considered too late by the court of appeal in an order of October 2018, quashed by the Court of Cassation in November.

Gérald Darmanin, 37, is accused by this woman of having raped her in 2009. At the time, she addressed the elected official, then project manager in the legal affairs department of the UMP, to try to quash a 2004 conviction for blackmail and malicious calls against an ex-boyfriend.

According to her, Mr. Darmanin would have dangled her support for the Chancellery in exchange for sexual favors.

"We now hope to have real judicial information, which will seriously examine the elements of the case," reacted to AFP My Elodie Tuaillon-Hibon and Marjolaine Vignola, who denounce the absence of confrontation between their client and the minister during the preliminary inquiry.

A second accuser, a resident of Tourcoing (North), a city whose minister was mayor from 2014 to 2017, had complained of "abuse of weakness", claiming that the elected official had asked her for sexual favors in exchange for accommodation . This procedure was also closed by the Paris public prosecutor's office in spring 2018.

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