“A Legion of Honor distinguishes a man, an artist, an attitude, values.” These are the words of the Minister of Culture as a preamble to her announcement: she wants to strip actor Gérard Depardieu of his Legion of Honor, accused of sexual violence by several women. “It turns out that I spoke with the Grand Chancellor of the Legion of Honor, General Lecointre,” explains Rima Abdul Malak. A council of the order of the Legion of Honor will meet and will initiate a disciplinary procedure to decide whether this Legion of Honor should be suspended or not, withdrawn completely or not. It will be up to them to decide. » This Saturday morning, the actor, through the voice of his lawyers, announced that he was making his Legion of Honor “available” to the Minister of Culture.
Gérard Depardieu, knighted in the Legion of Honor in 1996, would not be the first to have the precious distinction withdrawn, the order of which was created by Bonaparte to reward eminent military or civilian services rendered to France.
Automatic exclusion for any prison sentence of at least one year
Among the fallen, we find the cyclist Lance Armstrong, convicted of doping. The Texan had been made a knight of the Legion of Honor in a foreign capacity, as a professional cyclist by a decree of May 30, 2005. But following the doping scandal of which he was the subject, he was excluded from the order for “behavior contrary to the Legion of Honor”. According to the Legion code, for French people, this offense can lead to suspension or exclusion from the order for French people. The latter, in the event of a sentence of at least one year in prison, will have the medal automatically withdrawn. For foreigners, only one measure is planned, that of “withdrawal” from the order.
This is how in 2012 the British fashion designer John Galliano, former artistic director of the house of Dior, who had been convicted for having uttered anti-Semitic insults on two occasions in February 2011 in a Parisian café in the Marais district, was excluded from the order.
In 2018, the Syrian Bashar al-Assad did not wait to see the Legion withdrawn, awarded by Jacques Chirac in 2001. Suspected of being one of the architects of the massacres in his country, the Syrian president returned the distinction while France and the allies had just struck Syria.
More recently, it was Isabelle Balkany who was excluded from the order. The wife of the former mayor of Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine) Patrick Balkany, like him convicted of tax fraud, had her Legion of Honor withdrawn in 2021. A “humiliation”, she said. reacted. “I received the Legion of Honor for my work as a local elected official, particularly in favor of children and education,” she regretted. I made a mistake, that’s for sure, by not declaring my family assets, but it had absolutely nothing to do with my local function.”
Depardieu, sanctioned in Quebec
Concerning Gérard Depardieu, he has already been sanctioned in Canada. Decorated in 2002 by the National Order of Quebec, the monster of French cinema is no longer honored by this honorary distinction. “The scandalous remarks made by Gérard Depardieu in front of the cameras shocked the international public, with good reason. His behavior tarnishes the reputation of the members of the National Order of Quebec. I therefore took the decision to order his removal from the Order, effective immediately,” declared Prime Minister François Legault, quoted by Radio Canada.
In images revealed by a report from “Complément d’investigation” broadcast on France 2 at the beginning of December, Depardieu multiplies the misogynistic and insulting remarks while addressing women, not sparing a little girl from his obscene remarks. “In this report, her attitude is intended to be joking, provocative, but (she) is in fact quite disrespectful, unworthy and shameful to France,” regretted French Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak .