The CJR, the only court empowered to prosecute ministers for offenses committed in the exercise of their mandate, will deliver its decision on June 14, the sources said.

Among the demands made is also the hearing of Céline Parisot, president of the Syndicate Union of Magistrates (USM), one of the unions at the origin of the complaints lodged with the Anticor association to denounce situations of conflict of interests in two files.

The minister's lawyers also want Henri-Claude Le Gall, retired honorary magistrate and former president of the CJR between 2000 and 2012, to be heard. nullity petitions filed by the Minister.

They also asked for the cancellation of the judicial investigation opened in January 2021, which is worth to the former lawyer, renewed Friday at the Chancellery, to be indicted for "illegal taking of interest" since July 2021.

The attorneys for the Keeper of the Seals had already demanded, without success, that this procedure be canceled.

This hearing before the CJR came as the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation François Molins, who represents the public prosecutor before the CJR, requested a trial for the minister in early May, judging that there were "sufficient charges for this " against him.

The minister, who entered the government in the summer of 2020, is suspected of having taken advantage of his position to settle scores with magistrates with whom he had had trouble when he was a lawyer in two cases.

The first concerns the administrative investigation he ordered in September 2020 against three magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) who had his detailed telephone bills ("fadettes") go through when he was still a star at the bar.

In the second, he is accused of having initiated administrative proceedings against a former investigating judge seconded to Monaco, Edouard Levrault, who had indicted one of his ex-clients.

Eric Dupond-Moretti disputes the facts, claiming to have only "follow the recommendations of his administration".

Summoned in March and early April to be re-examined by the magistrates of the CJR, he refused to answer their questions.

© 2022 AFP