CORALIE DUBOST. The LREM MP for Hérault will leave politics at the end of her mandate in June 2022. Pinned down for excessive spending with the parliamentary budget and pregnant with her first child, Coralie Dubost decides not to run for the National Assembly .
[Mis à jour le 2 mai 2022 à 13h15] Coralie Dubost’s first term in the Assembly will also be her only one. The LREM deputy from Hérault announces this Monday, May 2 in a letter published on Twitter that she wants to “step back from political life”. While she confided “her desire to leave” on April 6 in the columns of Free lunchthe decision to leave politics seems to be imposed on her after the publication on April 29 of a Mediapart survey revealing the poor management of its teams and especially the advances of parliamentary expenses. Bitter end of term for the one who after only five years of politics is described as the rising star of La République en Marche. Accused of clothing expenses and exorbitant restaurant costs, figures and report of the ethics officer of the National Assembly in support, the elected official denies most of the facts with which he is accused. “For the past few days, my person has been targeted by unjust attacks that do a disservice to my political group, the electoral deadlines and more generally democracy,” she explains in her letter. Also in order not to undermine LREM and avoid becoming an “instrument of an anti-parliamentary cabal”, Coralie Dubost will not stand for re-election in the third constituency of Hérault in the legislative elections next June.
According to the newspaper’s investigation, the monthly mandate fee advances of €5,373 given to the delegate president of the majority group, as to all the deputies, were more often used for the personal expenses of Coralie Dubost than for the financing of parliamentary projects. Shopping for clothes, getaways to the beach and to high-end places to relax are singled out. Contacted by Mediapart, Coralie Dubost justifies each expense and claims to have reimbursed all costs deemed unrelated to the exercise of deputy. Because the confidential report dated spring 2021 consulted by the media is not the first to pin down the expenses of the elected official. In 2018 and 2019, controls by the National Assembly’s ethics officer for the years 2018 and 2019 have already taken Coralie Dubost over her management of expense advances and demanded the reimbursement of certain purchases.
In addition to the astronomical bills of the deputy, up to 3,300 euros spent in October 2018 for the purchase of clothes, it is also the behavior of Coralie Dubost vis-à-vis her collaborators who are called into question. The report mentions “inappropriate requests” relating to the private sphere made by Coralie Dubost to her parliamentary team. Facts that politics deny.
End of mandate and end of political career for Coralie Dubost
Elected in 2017 under the label of La République en Marche to sit in the National Assembly, Coralie Dubost, since delegate president of the majority group, will not try her luck again in June 2022. The end of her mandate as deputy also marks the end of the political career of the young woman at least for a time. She explains that she wants to “step back from political life”, a decision more motivated by the accusations that taint her mandate. “I refuse to be the instrument of an anti-parliamentary cabal, in the same way that I refuse to lend myself to a ping-pong of justifications which border on a phantasmagorical lynching”, she continues to explain her goodbye in the National Assembly.
MP LREM puts forward her pregnancy as another reason for leaving politics. At 39, Coralie Dubost is expecting her first child and wants to keep him away from the media. She would rather “protect the child than[elle] bears all the vicissitudes of exposure and political life”. Besides, the former companion of Olivier Véran does not extend on his private life with his new spouse, a certain Stanislas. of her departure from political life, the elected official indicates that she lost her father two months ago and regrets not having “devoted more time to her last breaths, I want to devote peaceful ones to those of my newborn .”
Parliamentary wardrobe and business meetings at the beach
The deputy of Hérault has for five years benefited from the monthly allowance of deputy of 7 239.91€ and the advances of expenses of mandate (AFM) of 5 373€ delivered there again every month by the National Assembly. If the first amount can be used for personal purchases, this is not the case for the second amount exclusively reserved for expenses related to the exercise of the mandate of deputy. The ethics officer of the National Assembly admits that among his expenses may include “reasonable” clothing purchases, in particular for costumes or shoes likely to be used within the framework of the mandate. However, the amounts spent by the parliamentarian regularly exceeding 2,500 euros until 2019 and included in a “range ranging from 1,500 to 2,000 euros” according to the April 2021 report have largely exceeded the framework. “There are mandate outfits and personal outfits […]I do not put the same business in my personal life and in my life of mandate”, explained Coralie Dubost to Mediapartan argument not convincing enough for the taste of the National Assembly.
In the viewfinder of the ethics officer are also reservations made in seaside establishments and other high-end leisure venues. Lunches and afternoons spent at the edge of the water or a swimming pool within the framework of “appointment of mandate”, justifies the elected official who describes “times of work as of team building as a team”. According to the report of the ethics officer submitted to the Assembly, the comfortable advances of mandate expenses were not enough to finance the standard of living of Coralie Dubost who had recourse to “applications for additional loans” to fill overdrafts of several thousand euros, particularly in 2017 and 2019. It was with the Banque Postale, in charge of all the AFM accounts of parliamentarians, that the deputy took out these loans, claiming that she was carrying out new fictitious work in her office, still according to Mediapart.
Expenses all reimbursed?
The abusive use of the parliamentary budget brought to light by Mediapart are in fact those observed and listed by the ethics officer of the National Assembly in April 2021. But this is not the first time that the elected official has been called to order for her excessive and unreasonable expenses. In 2018 and 2019, the ethics officer had already noted unjustifiable abuses, in particular in October 2018 with a record of 3,300 euros spent on clothing on online sales sites, but also in brands such as Sézane or The Kopples in the previous months or again with lingerie brands. The deputy presented these costs as “cash advances, when you need something at the last minute and you do not have your personal card on you”.
Coralie Dubost assures the newspaper that she has reimbursed all undue costs after her consecutive checks in 2018 and 2019. What about the expenses incurred in 2020 and 2022? Presumably the elected is currently in the process of reimbursing part of the costs but she refuses to specify the amount which she has already paid. She says she has “taken out a personal loan” to clear the slate with the National Assembly.
Parliamentary assistants assigned to “domestic tasks”
Confusing parliamentary and private spending was not Coralie Dubost’s only mistake. The elected official also maintained the vagueness between the professional and personal sphere with her collaborators. Former employees of the parliamentarian indicated that they had to “monitor [son] household staff” or “performing household chores [à son] home”. Tasks “relevant to the personal sphere or at the limit of the professional and personal spheres regularly requested, and not falling within the recurrent, normal and expected attributions of a position of collaborator and collaborator of a deputy” according to the report. Questioned on these points, the elected representative of Hérault says she has no memory: “It tells me absolutely nothing, you are talking to me about a period that is over”.