The two deputies had filed two complaints, one against X for forgery and use of forgery and identity theft, the other for defamation against the journalist who wrote the article, Aziz Zemouri, and the weekly.

Thursday, the Paris prosecutor's office confirmed the information from BFMTV of the opening of this investigation following the first complaint, entrusted to the Brigade for the repression of delinquency against the person (BRDP).

Last week, Le Point had published an article online which unduly accused the couple of having exploited an undocumented cleaning lady, which the two elected officials had immediately denied firmly: "everything is false", they had protested.

Very rare, the article had been removed the next day.

In an address to its readers, the newspaper admitted on Tuesday that the article had "turned out to be false" and "lies".

Le Point invoked "external smoking, first" by writing that "people probably sought to sell a false story to discredit Raquel Garrido and Alexis Corbière".

The weekly also explained that the screenshots of the text messages allegedly exchanged between the false employee and Raquel Garrido, and published by the journalist, "constituted a rough montage".

At the same time, Le Point opened an internal investigation, the author of the article was laid off and summoned to an interview prior to possible dismissal.

On Monday, the director of Point Étienne Gernelle said that the false information had been "invented" by still unknown speakers, then passed on by a journalist who had "melted a lead".

The weekly acknowledged shortcomings in its "internal control processes".

"stratagem"

On Tuesday, the journalist from Point Aziz Zemouri for his part filed a complaint in Val-de-Marne against the former UDI deputy Jean-Christophe Lagarde and a police officer.

He claims that this policeman, "who would be seconded to the town hall of Drancy" - whose mayor is the wife of Mr. Lagarde - had contacted him at the end of May to put him in contact with a woman claiming to be a housekeeper, undeclared and without papers, of the couple of deputies.

Raquel Garrido, 48, was elected deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis against Mr. Lagarde in the second round of the legislative elections.

"It is extremely serious to have set up a scheme to deceive a journalist, which could have had the effect of distorting universal suffrage", commented on Wednesday the journalist's lawyer, Me David-Olivier Kaminski.

According to the Paris prosecutor's office, this complaint was joined to the investigation for fraud.

The opening of this investigation is "a beautiful" step, which should seek to establish "what was the objective pursued with the creation of this fake", reacted to AFP the couple's lawyer, Me Xavier Sauvignet.

According to him, "the prosecution considers that there is a political dimension in this case" to "harm" Ms. Garrido during the legislative campaign.

Fraud is the fact, by the use of fraudulent maneuvers or by the use of a false quality, for example, of deceiving a person to determine him to provide a service to the detriment of a third party.

For Mr. Sauvignet, in this scheme, the deceived person would be Mr. Zemouri, the service the misleading article and the third party Mrs. Garrido.

© 2022 AFP