Ousted from the government, the former Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt was acquitted by the Paris criminal court this Wednesday, January 17, when he was suspected of favoritism during the award of the public water contract in 2009 when he was mayor of Annonay (Ardèche).
According to the court, “no privileged information” was provided by Olivier Dussopt to the water supply and treatment group Saur during a call for tenders in his municipality.
Suffering, according to his lawyer Georges Holleaux, Olivier Dussopt was not present at the hearing. In a statement sent to AFP, the former minister said he was “happy that his innocence was recognized and that justice was done to him”, considering that the court “after very detailed and precise reasoning” considered “that no no offense has been committed.
Olivier Brousse, former general director of Saur (Urban and Rural Development Company) who was prosecuted for complicity in favoritism, was also acquitted. Saur, prosecuted for concealment of favoritism, was also cleared. The court’s decision is a hard blow for the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) which had launched proceedings against the former minister. During Olivier Dussopt’s trial in November, the PNF requested a ten-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 15,000 euros. The court also rejected the accusations of the PNF which suspected the former minister of having modified the evaluation criteria of this call for tenders – relating to a contract worth 5.6 million euros – by reducing the importance granted to the price in order to favor Saur, holder of a public service delegation to manage the town’s water since 1994 but more expensive than competing companies.
“Compliant” calls for tenders
The evaluation criteria of the call for tenders were “in accordance with the public procurement code”, the court ruled. The PNF had denounced serious “failures” in the “duty of exemplarity” of elected officials, in the hope of “political gain” but the court refused to follow it on this ground.
During a search of the ex-minister as part of the preliminary investigation opened in May 2020 after an article in Mediapart, the investigators seized the minutes of a meeting which was held at the end of July 2009 between Olivier Dussopt and Olivier Brousse. The search also uncovered an email from the elected official to municipal services, requesting the modification of clauses in the specifications and the reduction of the importance given to price in the evaluation of candidates’ offers.
It was on the basis of these documents that the PNF concluded that the minister had “provided or attempted to provide privileged information” to Olivier Brousse in connection with the “future” water markets, while the municipality had decided to switch from a public service delegation to a management company.
At the end of his trial last November, Olivier Dussopt said he was not putting himself in the “perspective” of a possible conviction for favoritism. “I don’t put myself in that perspective. A trial is an experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But it also allowed me to respond point by point to the accusations and questions,” he explained in an interview with Parisian.