Jean-Noël Guérini on his arrival in court -

NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP

  • On the tenth day of the Guérini trial, the Marseille criminal court returned to the charges against the former chief of staff of the president of the general council.

  • Rémy Bargès recognizes indeed having proceeded to replace several computers, in a climate of "general panic".

On the ninth floor of the general council of Bouches-du-Rhôn, reserved for the close guard, on this day of autumn 2009, Jean-Noël Guérini "runs in all directions", according to his former chief of staff Rémy Bargès.

"He said, 'Is there nothing lying around? Is there nothing lying around?'

», Remembers the latter at the bar, on this tenth day of the Guérini trial before the Marseille Criminal Court

The investigations into this vast affair of potentially rigged public contracts, involving the president of the general council and his brother Alexandre, were then in their infancy.

Jean-Noël Guérini knows that a preliminary investigation on the subject was opened in April.

The press began to report it in the fall of 2009.

"General panic"

In this context, on November 30, 2019, at 9.45 a.m., the gendarmes of the research section presented themselves to the general council for a search.

Jean-Noël Guérini and his chief of staff are far, very far, in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, with schoolchildren on a school trip.

The investigators wish to get their hands on the computers of two close collaborators of Rémy Bargès, as well as those of the personal assistants of Jean-Noël Guérini.

But they leave… empty-handed.

"What the gendarmes will indicate is that this computer equipment would have been changed between November 17 and 19, or even on the 20th," recalls the president of the Marseille court, Céline Ballerini.

A few days earlier, while the press articles multiply, the "general panic" would indeed have won the blue boat, according to Rémy Bargès.

An "anxiety-provoking climate" which would have pushed the chief of staff to "accelerate the change" of certain computers.

"Culture of discretion"

The operation, envisaged after computer bugs, is rushed according to him to avoid possible media leaks.

"I had a culture of discretion, the concern to protect information of a political nature", justifies the bar Rémy Bargès, today prosecuted for destruction of evidence.

He says he never intended to "hide things from justice" and refers to a simple "stupidity".

If he assumes to have ordered the replacement of the computers of his collaborators, he says he is "trapped" to have accepted the request for replacement of the computers of Jean-Noël Guérini's assistants.

Women accused by Rémy Bargès and his lawyer of being part of an autonomous “black cabinet”, at the service of a “clientelist system” piloted by the president of the general council, through job allocations, subsidies or of housing.

Charges refuted en bloc by Jean-Noël Guérini.

"You were a good chief of staff but lying is of no use to anyone," he annoys.

Earlier in the day, the former president of the general council, convinced that this affair has as its source his political opponent Renaud Muselier, had launched at the bar of the court: "One day, I would tell the truth about what I was told. subjected.

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