Paris (AFP)
The Paris prosecution has opened an investigation for "breach of trust" and "concealment" concerning the payment of damages linked to the stormy search at the headquarters of LFI in 2018, a "new instrumentalization of justice" for Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his party.
The investigation revealed by the Duck chained Tuesday and confirmed to AFP by the Paris prosecutor's office aims, according to concordant sources, to verify the conditions under which the LFI leaders paid the damages to which they were sentenced in December in this matter.
According to the satirical weekly, it is specifically the payment of "26,500 euros of non-pecuniary damage to the police" by five LFI officials which is the subject of checks because these payments "were settled with the checkbook of La France rebellious. "
The question is therefore to know if these damages were indeed paid by the rebellious France but also to know if public money was used to effect this settlement, summarizes one of the sources contacted by AFP. The investigation was entrusted to the Financial Brigade.
"Insubordinate France has chosen to settle these damages linked to a search of its premises," assumes the former presidential candidate.
"If the criminal part, the fines, must be settled personally by the litigants, which was done by each of the persons concerned, the damages fall to them civil. They can therefore be settled by a third party", he justifies, citing an article of the civil code which would prove it.
"It is not a breach of trust, these damages were settled after a deliberation of the association LFI which allows the management of damages", for his part assured Me Jade Dousselin, lawyer for MEP Manuel Bompard, also targeted by the investigation.
- "Shit cannon" -
For Mr. Mélenchon, it is a "new instrumentalization of justice which seems to be motivated to feed articles aiming to intimidate us and to convey infamous rumors". A "shit cannon", for his support, the LFI deputy Adrien Quatennens.
This investigation is the distant consequence of two investigations, entrusted since the end of 2018 to examining magistrates: one relates to suspicions of overcharging in the accounts of the presidential campaign of 2017, the other on the conditions of employment of 'assistants to LFI MEPs.
On October 16, 2018, police and magistrates came to conduct a search at LFI headquarters as part of these two investigations.
According to images then broadcast by the program Quotidien (TMC), Jean-Luc Mélenchon had jostled a representative of the prosecution and a police officer then called his lieutenants to "break down the door" to enter the premises while the search was still in progress , shouting "the Republic is me" or "my person is sacred".
For these facts, the head of the Insoumis was sentenced for "rebellion" and "provocation" on December 9 to three months in prison suspended by the correctional court of Bobigny, and did not appeal.
He and four of his relatives, including MP Bastien Lachaud and Manuel Bompard, had also been sentenced to fines ranging from 2,000 to 8,000 euros, as well as the payment of damages.
Since his conviction, Mr. Mélenchon has repeatedly joked about the amounts owed to the police for having "shouted on a landing".
It is mainly in the terms of payment of these damages that this new investigation is therefore concerned.
This new judicial twist aroused Tuesday's annoyance at LFI, while the two judicial reports already in progress have damaged the image of the tribune "rebellious" and constitute a threat in view of the 2022 presidential election.
On Twitter, Jean-Luc Mélenchon received the support of his rival Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Rally: "Beyond our lively and deep political disagreements, this type of procedure smacks of relentlessness."
gd-bap-edy-grd / jt / dlm
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