After more than five years of investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, Michel Mercier will be sent back to court in Paris this fall, reveals Progress. The former Minister of Justice, ex-senator, ex-deputy and former president of the General Council of the Rhône, is suspected of embezzlement of public funds, and of fictitious jobs from which his family would have benefited.
Now retired, Michel Mercier will appear alongside his wife and daughter, implicated. The latter would have been employed as a parliamentary assistant to her father, while she was living in London, and would have illegally combined a job and an internship.
A trial that could be followed by another
The wife of the former minister is suspected of having embezzled funds from the Rhône department to organize various activities with the wives of notables, to serve the interests of Michel Mercier. Facts she admitted during a first hearing in 2017, still according to Progress.
Questioned by the regional daily, Me André Soulier, lawyer for the Mercier family, declared “formally contesting the accusations of fictitious jobs. As for invitations to wives, it’s irrelevant. These show trials will end up losing the Republic. Or by losing Michel Mercier, who is also suspected of complicity in embezzlement as part of the Modem’s parliamentary assistants.