Massive blows at the Agen Court of Appeal (Lot-et-Garonne). One of its magistrates was placed in police custody on Wednesday as part of an investigation relating in particular to her links with a suspected member of Corsican banditry, we learned from sources close to the case and the Nice prosecutor’s office.
“I confirm that a magistrate was placed in police custody on Wednesday as part of a preliminary investigation followed by the Nice prosecutor’s office, opened on charges of appeal by an organized gang serving people carrying out hidden work, money laundering, trafficking of active and passive influence,” said Damien Martinelli, Nice prosecutor.
“She is also in police custody for forgery of public documents by a person holding public authority and use of these forgeries as well as embezzlement of public funds,” added the prosecutor. This is Hélène Gerhards, magistrate at the Agen Court of Appeal, sources close to the case confirmed to AFP.
In the viewfinder since 2021
Since January 20, 2021, the Nice public prosecutor’s office has been in charge of an “investigation likely to implicate Hélène Gerhards”, specified the Aix-en-Provence general public prosecutor’s office in January 2023. This preliminary investigation is an incident of ‘a judicial investigation from the Specialized Interregional Jurisdiction (JIRS) of Marseille on the Corsican criminal gang of Petit Bar and was entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF), sources indicated close to the file. The magistrate’s home in Agen and her villa in Pietrosella (Southern Corsica) were searched in December 2022, AFP learned from a source close to the case.
The investigation concerns in particular the suspected links of this magistrate, stationed in Corsica between 2010 and 2016, with an alleged member of island banditry, Johann Carta, around the construction, renovation and rental of the villa of the judge on the Gulf of Ajaccio, judicial sources close to the case indicated. A villa now sold.
Johann Carta, former president of Gazelec Ajaccio (GFCA), a football club placed in compulsory liquidation in January 2023, was indicted and imprisoned in several investigations, notably in December 2023 in an investigation opened for “fraud, extortion of funds and organized gang money laundering” by the JIRS of Marseille.