Paris (AFP)

The Paris prosecutor's office announced Wednesday to AFP that it was confirming its classification without follow-up to an investigation targeting the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin, accused of having abused his position as elected in 2015 to obtain relations sexual.

The complaint for "abuse of weakness" of this resident of Tourcoing (North), who claimed to have been encouraged to have a sexual relationship with Mr. Darmanin, then mayor of the city, to obtain housing and a job, had been closed without continued in May 2018 by the prosecution.

But in mid-July, the association "Pourvoir feministe" had asked the justice to re-examine the facts, constituting according to it of "influence peddling".

The Minister of the Interior is also the target of a judicial investigation for rape, relaunched in June after a long procedural battle.

According to the Paris prosecutor's office, the association's letter, however, covered the same elements already examined by the preliminary investigation of 2018 and did not add new elements likely to call into question the initial decision.

"The Paris public prosecutor's office has indeed told us that the classification without follow-up was confirmed, no offense having been committed", welcomed the lawyers of the Minister of the Interior, Mathias Chichportich and Pierre-Olivier to AFP. Sure.

"This is what we have always said and we hope that the harassment against our client will now finally stop," added the Minister's lawyers.

At the time of the classification, the prosecution had however explained that the investigations had "not made it possible to characterize in all its constituent elements a criminal offense".

The complainant had not appealed against this classification.

In July on Europe 1, one of the minister's lawyers had also read a text message from this woman, which was sent to the minister when she was appointed earlier this month and in which she told him that, for her, " this case was closed ".

"Pourvoir feministe", created in June, had also sent a letter in mid-July to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), in order to "alert" it to a situation which poses a "real conflict of interests ", according to its president Anaïs Leleux.

Government heavyweight, Gérald Darmanin is also the subject of a judicial investigation for accusations of rape launched in 2017. In this other case, the complaint was also dismissed in spring 2018 by the prosecution.

But the procedure was relaunched at the beginning of June by the Paris Court of Appeal, which granted the complainant's request that an investigating judge resume the investigations.

© 2020 AFP