Marc-Philippe Daubresse, former minister of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, has been targeted since 2019 by an investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) on the use of his representative indemnity of mandate expenses (IRFM) when he was MP for the North, between 2012 and 2017.

Investigators from the Brigade for the Repression of Economic Crime (BRDE) of the Paris judicial police also went to the town hall of Lambersart (North) to obtain documents related to the case.

The PNF confirmed this information to AFP.

When contacted, Mr. Daubresse did not respond.

The senator was mayor of Lambersart for nearly 30 years, from February 1988 to December 2017.

The financial prosecutor's office had launched investigations after a report from the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP).

According to the online media Médiacités, which had revealed the existence of the investigation in 2020, the HATVP had uncovered nearly 100,000 euros of disputed expenses that could fall under the offense of embezzlement of public funds.

In 2018, the HATVP had transmitted to the justice the files of fifteen elected officials after having controlled the variation of their assets, between the first rules of supervision of the IRFM in 2015 and their end of mandate in 2017.

At the end of the investigations, nine procedures were closed without follow-up, had announced the national financial prosecutor's office in March 2022 without specifying the identity of the parliamentarians concerned.

These classifications occurred at the end of "the prior compensation of the damage and after justification of the reimbursement to the National Assembly or the Senate of the expenses considered ineligible for the representative indemnity of mandate expenses," said the prosecutor's office.

The sums reimbursed directly to Parliament "ranged between 6,707 euros and 47,299 euros".

A first conviction occurred in January: the former senator LR of Meurthe-et-Moselle Philippe Nachbar was sentenced to a sentence of ineligibility of three years and a fine of 100,000 euros for the misuse of 98,000 euros of compensation for mandate expenses between 2015 and 2017 during an appearance with prior recognition of guilt (CRPC).

© 2023 AFP