Rennes (AFP)

The court of cassation rejected the appeal of the deputy LREM Mustapha Laabid, sentenced on appeal to three ineligibility for breach of trust, we learned from his lawyer.

"I can confirm it to you," his lawyer Julien Delarue told AFP, following information from the daily Ouest-France.

Contacted several times, Mr. Laabid did not respond to AFP's requests.

The deputy for the 1st district of Ille-et-Vilaine, aged 52, was sentenced to six months suspended prison sentence, 10,000 euros fine and three years of ineligibility at first instance in August 2019. Then in November 2020 by the Rennes Court of Appeal to eight months suspended prison sentence, 10,000 euros fine and three years of ineligibility.

President of the Rennes association Intermède, which worked for the integration of young people into the labor market, this former entrepreneur, father of five children, was found guilty of having used 21,545 euros of funds from the association for personal purposes.

Mr. Laabid was accused of having used the association's bank card to pay for fast food, supermarket purchases, hotels in Paris - when he had just been elected to the National Assembly - and Marrakech for holidays with his family.

His telephone costs were also paid by the association.

Funded only by public subsidies, the association has since been dissolved.

The deputy was implicated after his election in June 2017 following a report from Tracfin.

"I generally admit errors, maybe even facts, but not in the totality of this long litany of what is reproached to me", had declared at the bar Mustapha Laabid.

After his conviction on appeal, Mr. Laabid denounced "the relentlessness" against him, "local elected officials" and the local press and "their connivance with this salon justice".

"Because I do not come from the same background, from the same caste. Because I do not frequent these small circles, these small lodges. Because they considered me from the first hour as illegitimate in my function of representative of the Nation. They all agreed to try to tear off my scarf as a deputy, "accused the elected Macronist.

A parliamentarian sentenced to ineligibility may continue to sit as long as the constitutional council has not pronounced the forfeiture of his mandate.

© 2021 AFP