Jean-Christophe Lagarde in court on suspicion of fictitious employment

A party leader and former MP at the helm.

The boss of the UDI, Jean-Christophe Lagarde, appears Monday before the Paris Criminal Court alongside his mother-in-law, to whom he is suspected of having granted a fictitious job as a parliamentary assistant.

Defeated in the June legislative elections after four successive terms, the former deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis will answer for "embezzlement of public funds" for the benefit of Monique Escolier-Lavail, the mother of his wife.

Employed in the Assembly for fifteen months at the end of the 2000s, she will be tried for “concealment” of this offense.

Joined by AFP, Jean-Christophe Lagarde's lawyer evokes an "empty file" and denounces the "exclusively dependent" investigation carried out from start to finish by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF).

"Mr. Lagarde has never been able to dialogue with a judge and will therefore have, for the first time, the opportunity to explain himself", welcomes Me Yvon Goutal.

The complaint of an opposition councilor

The PNF had opened its investigation in October 2017, after the complaint of Hacène Chibane, EELV opposition adviser in Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis), who questioned in particular the employment of parliamentary assistant of the wife of Jean-Christophe Lagarde, Aude Lavail-Lagarde, between 2002 and 2014. The latter, who succeeded her husband at the head of the city of Drancy in 2017, had resigned from these functions in the Assembly in 2014, after a centrist activist accused Jean-Christophe Lagarde of employing him illegally.

In his complaint, Hacène Chibane also accused Jean-Christophe Lagarde, mayor from 2001 to 2017, of having had the municipality pay the salaries of several parliamentary assistants working alongside him.

At the end of its investigation, the PNF however retained only the case of the mother-in-law of the former city councilor, whose reality of parliamentary work is disputed by Hacène Chibane.

“She had no parliamentary competence, except to be the mother-in-law of Jean-Christophe Lagarde”, affirms the elected opposition member.

Judicial clouds

Allied with LR during the last legislative elections, the boss of the UDI (Union of Democrats and Independents) since 2014 has seen the legal clouds accumulate in recent months.

At the beginning of September, the 54-year-old former MP was taken into police custody in the investigation into the false accusations, relayed by

, against the one who took his seat in the Assembly in June, Raquel Garrido, and her husband Alexis Corbière.

The weekly unduly reproached the couple of LFI deputies for having employed a cleaning lady without papers.

No prosecution has been initiated at this stage against Jean-Christophe Lagarde, but one of his former collaborators has been indicted in this case, in particular for “organized gang fraud” and “forgery and use of forgery”.

His election at Drancy canceled

At the beginning of September, the administrative court of Montreuil also canceled the election of Jean-Christophe Lagarde as deputy to the municipal council of Drancy, where he seeks to sit since his defeat in the legislative elections, due to irregularities during the ballot.

In practice and even during his deputation, Jean-Christophe Lagarde never abandoned the management of the day-to-day affairs of the city, in particular as a municipal councilor in charge of coordinating neighborhood councils.

In March 2021, the boss of the UDI had also been placed in police custody after the discovery of several weapons at his home by the police, called for a family dispute.