In their dismissal order, consulted by AFP, the magistrates are categorical: "parliamentary assistants worked for the benefit of the centrist party while they were paid by the European Parliament".

If these alleged offenses did not cause "personal enrichment of the deputies or the executives of the party", they "benefited" to the ex-UDF and its successor the Modem by reducing their payroll, believe the two magistrates .

The eleven centrist executives of the time, among which also figure the former Keeper of the Seals Michel Mercier or the ex-MEP Jean-Luc Bennahmias, but also the ex-UDF and the MoDem as legal persons, will therefore be soon to be tried by the Paris Criminal Court, mainly for "embezzlement of public funds", complicity or concealment of this offense.

According to the order, François Bayrou, current High Commissioner for Planning and close ally of Emmanuel Macron, "appears as the decision-maker and responsible for the establishment and operation of the fraudulent system" in question.

Former Minister of Justice Michel Mercier, in Paris on March 29, 2012 © KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP/Archives

He will be tried for "complicity by instigation in the embezzlement of public funds committed between June 2005 and January 2017, as president of the UDF party then Modem".

At the beginning of February, Mr. Bayrou had challenged any fictitious employment and other "processes" of embezzlement of public funds within his party.

Dismissal for Goulard

For the judges, however, "in view of the mode of operation of the parties (...) and the weight of its two heads, François Bayrou and Marielle de Sarnez", who died in January 2021 and who is therefore no longer the subject of prosecution , "it appeared clearly that the arbitrations and instructions given had been made by them".

Francois Bayrou and Marielle de Sarnez during a MoDem congress, in Paris on December 17, 2017 © PHILIPPE LOPEZ / AFP/Archives

"The embezzlement of European funds was organized by the political parties UDF and (its successor) MoDem, whose responsibility is engaged and several people, members of the governance of the parties by putting in place the cogs necessary for the fraudulent system, have been identified as accomplices of the embezzlement", analyze the magistrates.

The MEPs implicated have themselves "been the vectors of these misappropriations through the fictitious employment of parliamentary assistants for the exclusive benefit of the political party".

Despite the prosecutor's requests to the contrary, a dismissal was ordered for Sylvie Goulard, who had resigned from the Ministry of the Armed Forces after the revelations of these facts, as well as for the former MEP Nathalie Griesbeck.

The judges consider Mrs. Goulard as "a stranger to the embezzlement carried out" and think that "no element allows to certify that she was aware of employing" a parliamentary assistant working for the centrist party for a short time, even if "she could have been negligent".

Sylvie Goulard European commissioner for the internal market in Genval in Brabant in Belgium on September 12, 2019 © Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD / AFP/Archives

No trial either for the current MoDem deputy Maud Gatel, parliamentary assistant to Marielle de Sarnez until 2009, in accordance with the requests of the public prosecutor.

Resignations

"Six years of investigation and investigation, so that, year after year, most of the charges disappear. Nathalie Griesbeck, Robert Rochefort, Ms. Goulard, Maud Gatel and two years after her death Marielle de Sarnez are cleared of the suspicion of embezzlement “, reacted on Twitter François Bayrou.

Marielle de Sarnez during questions to the government, at the National Assembly on December 3, 2019 © Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP/Archives

"Only four or five contracts (part-time) dating from fifteen years ago remain in question", or "less than 2% of the payroll" of the UDF then of the MoDem, he said. underline.

The investigation began in March 2017 after the denunciation of a former elected National Front, Sophie Montel, on fictitious jobs of collaborators of nineteen of her colleagues from all sides.

Then a former MoDem collaborator, Matthieu Lamarre, claimed to have been partly paid in 2011 as an assistant to Mr. Bennahmias while he was working for the party in Paris.

These revelations had weakened the MoDem, President Macron's main ally, and led to the resignation of François Bayrou, then Keeper of the Seals, Marielle de Sarnez (European Affairs) and Sylvie Goulard, a month after their entry into government in 2017.

The investigations mainly targeted the 2009-2014 European legislature but also, to a lesser extent, the previous and subsequent legislatures.

Jean-Luc Bennahmias, January 15, 2017 in Paris © bertrand GUAY / AFP/Archives

The damage to the European Parliament is assessed at 1.4 million euros.

Similar investigations target the National Rally (RN), whose file is being closed, and La France insoumise (LFI).

© 2023 AFP