The far-right mayor of Orange, Jacques Bompard. (archives) – BORIS HORVAT / AFP
The mayor of Orange (Vaucluse) Jacques Bompard (South League, extreme right) was sentenced Thursday to one year suspended prison sentence and five years of ineligibility for illegal taking of interest by the Nîmes Court of Appeal. The far-right aedile who announced according to the newspaper Provence his intention to appeal in cassation, a decision which allows him to remain in post, was also fined 30,000 euros.
In May 2019, the mayor was sentenced at first instance to a six-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 euros, half of which was suspended, before the Criminal Court of Carpentras (Vaucluse). He had, however, escaped the ineligibility penalty required by the prosecution. Jacques Bompard was indicted in December 2010 following the opening of a judicial investigation opened after the complaint of an orange wine operator, Bernard Jaume, former member of the FN. The facts go back more than fifteen years, when Jacques Bompard was still elected to the National Front, since become the National Rally.
A case of sale of municipal property to relatives
The justice accused the mayor of Orange for the sale by the city of real estate to his daughter and his son-in-law. He was also implicated for having bought with his wife two building plots in an Orange subdivision via a real estate company (SCI). However, this subdivision benefited from a technical easement (passage of sewerage, water and electricity networks) granted by the town hall during a vote in which the mayor had taken part, said his lawyer Me Benoît Fleury.
“If it had not been Jacques Bompard, we would never have had a sentence of ineligibility” pronounced for “such debatable facts”. “His political opponents have never succeeded in defeating him at the ballot box and today it is justice that takes care of it”, denounced Me Fleury.