A pillar of the presidential majority on the court. François Bayrou is on trial from Monday in Paris alongside ten former centrist executives and elected officials, for suspicion of embezzlement of public funds in the affair of European parliamentary assistants.
The defendants in this trial, which is to be held until November 15, are suspected of having used European funds between 2005 and 2017 to pay parliamentary assistants who in reality worked for the UDF, then the MoDem.
Bayrou denies outright
On the bench, François Bayrou, boss of these two parties and today High Commissioner for Planning, but also the former Minister of Justice Michel Mercier, five former MEPs including Jean-Luc Bennahmias, three executives and a parliamentary assistant from the time, as well as the two parties as a legal entity.
“Most of the charges have been dropped. And I want to repeat it: I have never, not once, and we have never, as those responsible, as a party, participated in the slightest embezzlement,” François Bayrou told the Republic of the Pyrenees on Tuesday.
Saying he was “hurt” by an “unfounded” investigation and “false” accusations, the 72-year-old mayor of Pau, who notably faces ineligibility, added that he was “determined to ensure that the truth of the facts prevail.” »
Serial resignations
The investigation began in March 2017 after the denunciation of a former National Front elected official, Sophie Montel, on fictitious jobs of collaborators of nineteen of her colleagues from all sides.
Then a former MoDem collaborator claimed to have been partly paid in 2011 as an assistant to Bennahmias when he actually worked for the party in Paris.
These revelations, then the investigation, had weakened the MoDem, Emmanuel Macron’s main ally, and led to the resignation of François Bayrou, then Minister of Justice, Marielle de Sarnez (European Affairs) and Sylvie Goulard (Minister of the Armed Forces) , just one month after their entry into government.
At the end of 2019, a dozen former MEPs or party executives were indicted. And after almost six years of investigation, the judges sent thirteen defendants back to court on March 9, 2023.
Bayrou accused of being the “decision maker” of the system
According to the accusation, the centrist organization, to cope with financial difficulties, partially paid MoDem employees from the “envelopes” of European deputies, without the latter actually working for the elected officials. Jobs of “convenience” which would not have resulted in “personal enrichment” but “benefited” the centrist party, by reducing its payroll.
François Bayrou, who was at the head of the party with Marielle de Sarnez, who died in 2021, is dismissed for complicity by instigation of embezzlement of public funds, suspected of having been the “decision maker” of the “system”, when Michel Mercier is suspected for having been an “essential cog” as treasurer. Several contracts for six parliamentary assistants are affected, for a total of around 350,000 euros.
Non-places
François Bayrou’s defense refutes the existence of a “system”, arguing that this sum represents less than 2% of salaries over the period and ensuring that the MoDem did not have financial difficulty outside of a short period. early 2013.
At the end of the investigations, Sylvie Goulard and Nathalie Griesbek benefited from a dismissal of the charges, like Robert Rochefort (placed under the status of assisted witness) and the current Modem MP Maud Gatel.
The European Parliament, whose financial damage was once estimated at 1.4 million euros, the figure now stands at 293,000 euros, of which 88,000 have already been reimbursed, as part of the referral to the court.
Similar surveys on the RN and LFI
Refuting any “political” trial, the lawyer for this institution, Me Patrick Maisonneuve, considered that it had a “duty” to be a civil party. “This necessarily has repercussions on the credibility, the credit of Parliament, in the use that is made of public funds,” he told AFP.
Similar investigations in France target La France insoumise (LFI) and the National Rally (RN). In this latest judicial information, at the end of September, the prosecution requested a trial for the far-right party and 27 people, including Marine Le Pen and Jean-Marie Le Pen, for damage estimated by Parliament in 2018 at 6.8 millions of euros.