She is suspected of having revealed to a friend that the latter and her boyfriend were wiretapped in a drug case. A court clerk from Evry (Essonne) was sentenced Friday by the Paris Court of Appeal to a five-year ban on practicing her profession. At first instance, at the end of March, the judicial court of Créteil (Val-de-Marne) sentenced this young woman, who was then 26 years old, to the same ban for a period of 18 months.
This clerk was on trial for revealing information about an investigation into a crime or misdemeanor to a person likely to be involved in it. On Friday, the Court of Appeal decided to include this conviction in the section of his criminal record which can be consulted by the administrative authorities, but also by certain employers.
“Sabotage of police and justice action”
In post since October 2023 in the service of the judge of freedoms and detention of Evry, the young woman had alerted a close friend in January that she and her boyfriend were being tapped. The latter then informed her companion, suspected of being a major player in drug trafficking in Evry, by telephone, which allowed investigators to detect the leak.
“We are delighted that the court did not follow the requests for suspended imprisonment,” reacted to AFP Me Saïd Harir, counsel for the young woman. The public prosecutor had requested an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a two-year ban on practicing for what he described during the hearing as “sabotage of the action of the police and justice”.
Four hours of ethics course
For his part, Mr. Harir recalled that the two suspects, the friend’s companion and her brother, had already been convicted and that the investigation concerning them had been able to be completed. According to him, the clerk’s training, which the defendant had followed largely remotely due to confinements linked to Covid-19, only includes four hours of ethics courses. “I am convinced that he was not told that there is a general interest which takes precedence over private interests” before the hearing, he argued.