She will be able to serve her prison sentence at home, under an electronic bracelet. The former director of the Nantes classical music festival La Folle Journée, Joëlle Kerivin, was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison, including ten months, by the Nantes court. She was tried for breach of trust and embezzlement of public funds.
Joëlle Kerivin, 50, was prosecuted for the embezzlement of some 232,000 euros belonging to the Société anonyme d’économie mixte (SAEM) La Folle Journée, and some 61,000 euros to the Simone de Beauvoir area, a space for the defense of women’s rights, which she chaired. The court ordered her to reimburse all of the sums embezzled. She also has the obligation to exercise a professional activity and to follow psychological and psychiatric care.
A “relatively severe” sentence, according to the lawyer
The former director, absent from the deliberations, also received a permanent ban on exercising, on a professional or voluntary basis, a financial management activity. She is also sentenced to a ban on managing or controlling a company for fifteen years and ineligibility for five years. “The court sentenced Joëlle Kerivin to a relatively severe sentence by going beyond the requisitions”, reacted Nicolas de la Taste, lawyer for La Folle Journée. The prosecution had requested a four-year suspended prison sentence in March. The court “took the measure of the magnitude of the amounts embezzled and the duration of the facts”, which occurred between 2014 and 2021, he added.
“The court condemned Joëlle Kerivin fairly and firmly after a hearing which had demonstrated her manipulative capacities”, commented Cécile de Oliveira, lawyer for the Simone de Beauvoir space. The court sentenced the auditor, also prosecuted in this case, to a six-month suspended prison sentence. “It was important to also condemn him for his culpable negligence,” said Christophe Boog, lawyer for the city of Nantes.
Throughout the hearing in March, Joëlle Kerivin was confused in excuses explaining to have “done anything” and “committed the irreparable”.