"Listening" case: lawyers ulcerated at having been spied on by the Financial Prosecutor's Office - France 24

Paris (AFP)

The revelation of large-scale investigations, carried out by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) on tenors of the bar in an attempt to identify a possible "mole" in 2014 in the so-called "wiretapping" affair, scandalized lawyers on Thursday and Nicolas Sarkozy's camp.

This preliminary investigation, parallel to the judicial information on the "wiretapping" affair, was known for a long time by the defense of the former president and his counsel, Me Thierry Herzog.

But so far neither the content nor the extent of the surveillance of all these lawyers had been exposed before the revelations Thursday of the weekly Le Point.

Open on March 4, 2014 for "violation of professional secrecy", the preliminary investigation was finally closed without follow-up in December 2019, almost six years later, according to the PNF at AFP.

According to the weekly, investigators from the Central Office for Combating Corruption and Financial and Fiscal Offenses (Oclciff) have for a while sifted through the detailed telephone bills ("fadettes") of many tenors of the bar and their collaborators, among which Mes Eric Dupond-Moretti, Jean Veil, Jacqueline Laffont, Pierre Haïk, Hervé Témime or Marie-Alix Canu-Bernard but also of a magistrate or fixed lines of the PNF. Some lawyers have even been geolocated.

"Requesting + fadettes + is legally possible in a preliminary investigation without the law imposing to inform the president of the bar," commented the PNF.

Objective: to find the possible mole within the magistracy which would have informed one of these people of the existence of wiretapping targeting MM. Sarkozy and Herzog. All these people were in telephone contact with Me Herzog on February 25, 2014, the day he and Nicolas Sarkozy, according to the investigators, understood that the famous "Paul Bismuth" telephone line was being listened to.

The affair comes at a time when the national financial prosecutor's office, created under the presidency of François Hollande, is already the subject of sharp criticism. A few days ago, Eliane Houlette, at its head until the end of June 2019, claimed to have been subjected to procedural "pressures" on the part of the public prosecutor's office in the conduct of the Fillon case, statements interpreted by the camp of the ex-presidential candidate as the admission of political pressures to question their champion.

- "Barbouzes" -

These revelations ulcerated the lawyers concerned on Thursday. Me Dupond-Moretti announced on LCI a "complaint" against these "methods of barbouzes".

"It is an attack on what the judiciary is supposed to represent", reacted Me Canu-Bernard. "I do not understand this constant suspicion towards lawyers".

On the political level, the deputy LR Eric Ciotti saw in it a "French Watergate".

For the lawyers of MM. Sarkozy, Herzog and Azibert, the failure of these investigations testifies to the conceit of the prosecutions which are worth a lawsuit to their customers for "corruption", "influence peddling" and "violation of professional secrecy". This trial will take place from November 23 to December 10, before the Paris Criminal Court from November 23 to December 10.

In this "wiretapping" case, the former head of state is suspected of having tried to obtain secret information from the former high magistrate at the Court of cassation Gilbert Azibert in a procedure on the sidelines of the Bettencourt case, in exchange for a boost for a position in Monaco.

These interceptions of the ex-head of state's telephone conversations with his lawyer were originally launched as part of the investigation into accusations of Libyan funding for his 2007 campaign.

The police had discovered that Nicolas Sarkozy was using a secret cellphone opened under the alias "Paul Bismuth" to communicate with his friend and his lawyer.

The scale of the investigations to find the supposed "mole" shows the desperate aspect of the procedure, we are going to search to the end of the world for evidence that does not exist, all this to lead to an acknowledgment of failure and hiding it from the defense "reacted to AFP Me Paul-Albert Iweins, lawyer for Me Herzog.

The PNF replied that it preferred the route of the preliminary investigation for these investigations because it "did not want to undermine the proper conduct of judicial information".

These preliminary investigations were never, according to these sources, included in the investigation file which led to the trial. This is the real "scandal", stressed to AFP another lawyer for the file, who believes that the classification without follow-up is for MM. Sarkozy and Herzog and should have prevented their referral to trial.

The police tapping, the basis of the accusation, had been validated by the Court of Cassation in March 2016. But it should still fuel a bitter battle at the start of the trial.

© 2020 AFP