Will Eric Dupond-Moretti be tried for “illegal taking of interests”? The Keeper of the Seals will know on Friday July 28 the decision of the Court of Cassation on his referral to the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) for the charges against him.
The debates within the Court of Cassation lasted more than two hours this Friday morning. Absent during the hearing, the Keeper of the Seals is suspected of having taken advantage of his function as minister to settle accounts with three former magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) and a former Monegasque investigating judge to whom he s was opposed in his former life as a lawyer.
The commission of instruction of the CJR, the only jurisdiction capable of trying ministers for acts committed in the exercise of their functions, ordered at the beginning of October 2022 the dismissal of the former “Acquittator” before its formation of judgment.
“A litigant like the others”
Me Patrice Spinosi, lawyer advising Éric Dupond-Moretti, defended seven appeals against decisions or irregularities which would have appeared during the procedure before the CJR, and an eighth against the October dismissal judgment.
He denounced the “procedural errors” of the CJR during its investigation and requested the quashing of several decisions of the CJR’s investigating committee, a sign that his client would then be treated as “a litigant like the others”.
Among the contentious points raised, the absence of notification to the Keeper of the Seals of his right to silence during the hearing for the notification of the charges in October; the sorting of documents by a clerk during the search at the ministry in July 2021; the role of judge and party assigned to François Molins, who left his post as public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation at the end of June, and who had assumed the role of the prosecution in this procedure; the initial complaints of the magistrates’ unions and Anticor, presented as irregular…
The Keeper of the Seals would have “followed the recommendations”
In this case, worried Me Spinosi, “even the obvious are fought, we must fight step by step to obtain the simple application of the common rule”. If his argument was followed, the file would return to the hands of the newly composed CJR investigation committee, which would have to decide again on the charges against Eric Dupond-Moretti.
Frédéric Desportes, Advocate General at the Court of Cassation, acknowledged certain irregularities, but proposed to validate the procedure globally. “There is no need to break the dismissal order,” he assured. If the Court of Cassation follows it, it “will settle the dispute in the interest of the proper administration of justice”, without delaying the trial hearing, he hopes.
“What efforts to try to avoid a cassation which you have been told that in the state of case law it is obvious”, replied Mr. Spinosi. “Wouldn’t the proper administration of justice be to smash and dismiss? “, he continued, asking if “the temporality of this affair is more important than its legal regularity”, while President Emmanuel Macron could be tempted to reshuffle the government.
Throughout the investigation, the Keeper of the Seals repeated that he had only “followed the recommendations of his administration” by triggering the investigations and denounced an instruction from the CJR against him.