Former minister Kader Arif has an appointment this Wednesday in front of the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), the only body empowered to judge members of the government for acts committed in the exercise of their functions. This close friend of François Hollande must answer “for illegal taking of interests, infringement of freedom of access to equal public contracts and embezzlement of public funds”.
For the man who was Minister Delegate then Secretary of State for Veterans Affairs under the Ayrault and Valls governments, the affair dates back to 2014, when the Ministry of Defense signed, without competition, a “media training” contract with a company owned by one of his brothers. The market of 60,000 euros covered six sessions of which only one was honored. The revelation of this market, after a search at the ministry, had prompted Kader Arif to resign from the government on November 21, 2014, in the already sulphurous context of the Cahuzac affair.
An investigation still ongoing
Kader Arif, 63 today, was also the boss of the PS in Toulouse for a long time. He is preparing to challenge the case before the CJR. He “protests his innocence and considers that the facts with which he is accused have not been established: that he did not promote his brother’s business, that he did not misappropriate public funds”, confided to AFP his lawyer, François Cantier. The latter also considers this trial before a court of exception distorted, while a judicial investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office against the other protagonists of the case is still in progress.
The court of the CJR is made up of three magistrates and twelve parliamentarians (six deputies and six senators). It decides by absolute majority and by secret ballot on the guilt of the defendant, then, if necessary, on the sentence imposed.