“Misunderstanding” or small family arrangement? Two years of suspended prison sentence were required this Thursday before the Republican Court of Justice against former socialist minister Kader Arif. He has been appearing since Wednesday for “illegal taking of interest” after his Department of Veterans Affairs signed a media training contract in 2014 with a company managed by his brother, without respecting the terms and conditions for awarding public contracts.
If the amounts at stake – 60,000 euros when only one session out of six was actually honored – are “modest”, “such behavior testifies to a conception of the State which is not acceptable and which goes to the “against the principles of exemplarity and probity” expected of a public official, said the attorney general at the Court of Cassation François Molins, who represents the prosecution at the CJR, the only body authorized to judge a minister for acts committed in the exercise of his functions.
Desire to “conceal”
François Molins also retained a desire for “concealment”, the name of Kader Arif’s brother not appearing on the contract, and required a fine of 15,000 euros and a ban on exercising public functions for five years.
Taking up the position defended Wednesday before the Court by Kader Arif, one of his lawyers, Vincent Valade, affirmed that his client “did not know, at the time of the signing of this contract, that it was the company All Access”. who benefited from it, nor “that his brother was hiding behind this company”. As for the payment of the invoice after a single session, “there may have been a misunderstanding” between the minister and his chief of staff, the latter having asked him if everything had gone well and Mr. Arif having replied “yes”, with only this first session in mind.
Flawed trial?
François Cantier, the other lawyer for the former minister, then pleaded that this appearance before the CJR deprived Kader Arif of a “fair trial”, while a judicial investigation at the Paris court is still in progress against five other protagonists in the case.
Now 63 years old, Kader Arif, long very close to François Hollande, has asserted his retirement rights and withdrawn from public life. The decision of the CJR will be rendered on October 26.