Eric Dupond-Moretti’s son, Raphaël Dupond-Moretti, was taken into custody yesterday evening in Courchevel on suspicion of domestic violence. The Minister of Justice reacted in the morning this Friday…
It is a “devastated” Eric Dupond-Moretti who spoke at the microphone of several media, including franceinfo and TF1, this Friday, January 27, at midday. According to the first channel, the son of the Minister of Justice Raphaël Dupond-Moretti was placed in police custody Thursday evening on suspicion of domestic violence. Information confirmed by several media since and by the minister himself.
“As a father, I am devastated”
(Eric Dupond-Moretti)
“As a father, I am devastated”, reacted the Keeper of the Seals. “I have a thought for the victim. Each violence, whatever it is, is intolerable”, added Eric Dupond-Moretti, who intends to distinguish the Minister of Justice from the citizen in the media coverage of this affair. The first recalled that he had “stopped fighting against violence against women and for their word to be taken into account”. But the second asks “that we respect [s]a family life”. The two nevertheless agree that it “is now up to Justice to do its job”.
This case against a member of his family is an additional burden for the Minister of Justice, who should himself be tried soon by the Court of Justice of the Republic in a very different context. A trial was indeed ordered on Monday, October 3, 2022 by a CJR inquiry commission against Eric Dupond-Moretti, a first in history, the Keeper of the Seals being the first serving member of a government to be dismissed. before this court.
Eric Dupond-Moretti has been in the sights of the CJR since January 2021, for “illegal taking of interests”. A possible settling of accounts to which he would have devoted himself since his appointment as Place Vendôme in the summer of 2020, in the Castex government. Just in place, he then ordered administrative investigations against several magistrates with whom he had been in conflict during his career as a lawyer.
Files of “illegal taking of interests”
Edouard Levrault, a former investigating judge in Monaco, is one of the alleged victims. When he was in post in the Principality, the magistrate had been the subject of a complaint filed by Eric Dupond-Moretti, who defended Christophe Haget, then director of the Monegasque judicial police and incriminated by Edouard Levrault during a report of France 3 in an investigation into sales of paintings. The object of the complaint lodged by the future minister: “violation of the secrecy of the instruction.” The investigation carried out by the Superior Council of the Judiciary concluded, in September 2022, that no fault had been committed.
The second case is that, more publicized, of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF). Eric Dupond-Moretti had filed a complaint in June 2020 against the institution for “violation of the intimacy of private life and the secrecy of correspondence” after learning that his telephone records had been peeled as part of the case of suspicions Libyan financing of the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2007. The investigators were then looking for the person who would have informed the former president of the Republic that he was also listening.
While a first inspection launched by the former Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet had resulted in the whitewashing of the jurisdiction, a new predisciplinary investigation had been launched in mid-September 2020 at the initiative of Eric Dupond-Moretti against three magistrates of the PNF. The ex-chief of the PNF Eliane Houlette and his number 2 Patrice Amar were cleared in October 2022 of disciplinary proceedings.
Can Eric Dupond-Moretti resign?
In this case, Eric Dupond-Moretti has always denied the facts with which he is accused and refused to resign, boasting in particular in April 2022 of the “trust” of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, confidence confirmed to AFP by Matignon. Assuring that the procedure targeting him had “never hindered (his) work”, the Minister of Justice assured last spring that an appeal in cassation had been lodged and intended to assert “a certain number of elements of law” .
“If I had to be tried, I would say what I have to say, I am a litigant like any other,” added the minister on the sidelines of a trip to Paris at the time. A speech that should not change, as long as the Court of Cassation has not ruled on the validity or not of a trial. If it were to be confirmed, the latter should not take place before the end of 2023.