This decision could have consequences on several sensitive political and financial issues. The administrative court of Paris could cancel on Friday the judicial approval granted to the Anticor association which allows it to take legal action, we learned this Thursday from concordant sources. The plaintiffs, dissidents of the association, seized administrative justice in June 2021 to challenge the decree of April 2 of the same year, signed by the former Prime Minister Jean Castex, who had renewed after months of uncertainty Anticor’s approval.
For the applicants, the renewal procedure was irregular and the approval should not have been granted for lack of conditions met by Anticor: independent and disinterested nature of its activities, information of its members on management, etc. On Friday, the administrative court must rule on this appeal. The public rapporteur, whose opinion is often followed, “concluded the cancellation of the approval granted by the Prime Minister in April 2021. He followed our arguments, therefore”, welcomed Me Frédéric Thiriez, lawyer applicants.
“A blow to the fight against corruption”
“The cancellation of the approval of the Anticor association would be a blow to the fight against corruption and therefore to our democracy”, on the contrary warned the president of the association, Elise Van Beneden. A withdrawal of approval would be for her “a new attempt to stifle our voice and those of the citizens who support us”. The association had already seen political motives in the laborious renewal of the accreditation in 2021.
For Elise Van Beneden, “it would be taking the risk of restricting the ability of civil society to take legal action against corruption, in a context where political and financial affairs are accumulating and freedom of association is declining”. “Many ongoing cases, at the highest level, could be threatened if Anticor lost its ability to bring civil action on behalf of all French people,” she also warned.
Many emblematic files
Anticor’s lawyer in this case, Me Vincent Brengarth, denounced a procedure “abusive, unfounded, nonsense, in that it risks preventing the association’s fight against corruption”. In some recent cases where the lawsuits were triggered by a complaint from Anticor.
Like the file of relations between the former minister Sylvie Goulard and the American institute Berggruen, the sale of the energy branch of Alstom to General Electric or the Russian contracts of Alexandre Benalla, it is the whole procedure which risks the cancellation, according to a source close to the association. According to sources familiar with the matter, Anticor asked the administrative court as a precaution for a postponement in time of the effects in the event of cancellation.