“I have to defend my honor. Dismissed from his mandate by the Marseille criminal court, which sentenced him on Friday to three years in prison suspended and five years of ineligibility in a case of embezzlement of public money, Hubert Falco announced on Tuesday his decision to call.
The former mayor of Toulon relays on his Twitter account the press release from his lawyer Me Thierry Fradet, who wishes “that a new trial be organized as quickly as possible”. According to him, the challenge of this future judicial meeting is, in addition to the hoped-for release, “the additional penalty of ineligibility so that the elected official recovers his mandates”. In fact, the sentence of ineligibility was pronounced with provisional execution, it is thus immediately applicable, even in the event of an appeal.
Friday’s judgment is a thunderclap in local politics. Aged 75, the strong man from Var fell on a case of meals and dry cleaning paid for with public funds from the Departmental Council. He was dismissed from his mandate with immediate effect for having “totally flouted”, according to justice, his duty to set an example in this case. The elected official, a former member of the Les Républicains party rallied to Emmanuel Macron, was also sentenced to the confiscation of 55,000 euros which had been seized from his account.