Water has flowed under the bridges of the Garonne since this absurd affair but justice has taken its course. Laurence Arribagé, second deputy mayor of Toulouse and former president of the LR federation of Haute-Garonne, now with Horizons, will be tried this Wednesday in Paris before the criminal court. Alongside him on the dock are Marc Menvielle, the former number 2 of the Tax Office in Occitanie, and Frédéric Sartorelli, a business manager from the Pink City. They are being prosecuted for “concealment of slanderous denunciation and concealment of illegal taking of interest”. The trio is suspected of having tried to destabilize Corinne Vignonthen a Macronist candidate in the June 2017 legislative elections. An election that she ultimately won, she is still a member of parliament.
The affair broke out between the two rounds of voting. Corinne Vignon, little-known mayor of the small town of Flourens, somewhat mocked for her passion for astrology and numerology, finds herself – like many En Marche candidates – in a favorable vote to steal the seat of deputy for the third constituency from Haute-Garonne to the outgoing LR Laurence Arribagé. A clap of thunder then resounded in the countryside sky in the form of a press release from the Toulouse public prosecutor’s office. He announces that he is opening a preliminary investigation for “concealed work” against the candidate En Marche. The investigations concern the realization of astral themes, the benefits of which have not been declared.
This aspect was discussed in September 2017, with the investigation by the financial brigade being closed without further action after having found only “paltry sums” for three astral themes in total.
The affair within the affair
But another parallel investigation focused on the “circuit” of the famous revelation. She established that Frédéric Sartorelli, Corinne Vignon’s former employer with whom he was angry, could be at the origin of the rumor about astral charts paid “under the table”. It also showed that Patrick Menvielle, in his capacity as tax manager, had been very diligent in reporting the facts to the courts, without however referring them to his superiors. Finally, the two men would have exchanged cryptic SMS messages at the time of the events, revealed by Mediapart, with Laurence Arribagé, the main political rival of Corinne Vignon. Hence the suspicion of a political plot hatched by the three protagonists, linked by cascading bonds of friendship, to block the path to the Palais Bourbon for the “walker”.
Eric Mouton, Laurence Arribagé’s lawyer, spoke only once in six years about the various twists and turns. “There has never been a pact with anyone, nor any corruption of any kind,” he said. The court will have to judge this in this very Toulouse-Toulouse trial but sensitive and therefore “out of place” in Paris.