Éric Ciotti in the crosshairs of justice. A preliminary investigation for embezzlement of public funds was opened around suspicions of multiple jobs at the Alpes-Maritimes departmental council which may have benefited the president of the Republicans, we learned on Monday from the Nice prosecutor’s office.
According to a report published in December by the regional chamber of accounts (CRC) on the Alpes-Maritimes departmental council, “four cabinet colleagues and two community agents also exercising their functions within the cabinet are, or have been, in the same time parliamentary assistants in the National Assembly”.
Non-compliance with the rules for multiple employment
According to the CRC, the four employees had not taken the necessary steps to comply with the rules for multiple employment imposed on public officials, which in any case did not allow this type of multiple employment for the two community agents. According to the newspaper The worldthe four employees work in the service of Éric Ciotti, deputy for Alpes-Maritimes and former president of the departmental council (2008-2017).
The CRC report noted, however, that the current president of the local assembly, Charles-Ange Ginésy, close to Éric Ciotti, had assured that the situations had been regularized.
Ongoing investigations
The AC anti-corruption association!! had contacted the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) in December. “We are in a democracy and not in a royalty with small lords who place their pawns,” Marcel Claude, the president of the association, explained to AFP, estimating that the situation of accumulation had allowed Éric Ciotti “to “save your parliamentary budget and afford means that no ordinary MP” could afford.
The PNF relinquished its duties at the end of December in favor of the Nice public prosecutor’s office and investigations are underway “as part of a preliminary investigation opened into the charge of embezzlement of public funds”, announced the public prosecutor in Nice Damien Martinelli . Contacted by AFP, Éric Ciotti and the departmental council declined to comment.