The Paris prosecutor's office announced to AFP on Wednesday, September 2, that it confirmed its classification without follow-up to an investigation targeting the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin, accused of having abused his elected position in 2015 to get sex.

The complaint for "abuse of weakness" of this resident of Tourcoing, who claimed to have been encouraged to have a sexual relationship with Gérald Darmanin, then mayor of the city, to obtain housing and a job, had been closed 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".

>> To read: Behind the controversies, the right-wing strategy of Gérald Darmanin

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.

"This case is closed"

At the time of the classification, the prosecution had however explained that the investigations had "not allowed 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 an SMS 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 ".

>> To read: Dupond-Moretti and Darmanin, two appointments that go wrong among feminists

"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 in early June by the Paris Court of Appeal, which granted the complainant's request that an examining magistrate resume the investigations.

With AFP

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