Discretion was put. Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe was placed on Tuesday, October 18, under the status of witness assisted by magistrates of the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) who heard him on the government’s management of the Covid-19 epidemic. 19, a source familiar with the matter said on Saturday, confirming information from France info. He was placed under this intermediate status for endangering the lives of others and voluntary abstention from fighting a disaster, following a hearing before the three judges of the CJR’s investigating committee, said this source. Contacted by AFP, his lawyer, Me Emmanuel Marsigny, declined to comment.
The mayor of Le Havre and president of Horizons, a political party close to the presidential majority, escapes at this stage from being indicted in this case, the status of assisted witness being between that of the witness and that of the indicted. In an interview given to Parisian on October 8, he vigorously contested the charges against him. Edouard Philippe is suspected by some of not having ordered protective measures for healthcare personnel and exposed workers, nor of having anticipated the epidemic, despite the alerts.
According The world, he also had to explain himself on the maintenance of the first round of the municipal elections on March 15, 2020, while the contaminations intensified, and on the late activation of the interministerial crisis unit (CIC), on March 17. His summons had been announced for October 24, but the interrogation finally took place a week earlier. The CJR, the only one empowered to prosecute and judge members of the government for crimes or misdemeanors committed in the exercise of their functions, had opened a judicial investigation after nine complaints announced admissible on July 3, 2020, among the 90 received. Since then, other complaints have been added to the file.
Olivier Véran has not yet been heard by the CJR
On March 25, 2020, eight days after the start of the first confinement, the first five complaints against members of the government concerning their management of the Covid-19 pandemic were registered by the CJR. They come from individuals, doctors and associations, and denounce in particular the lack of protective equipment for caregivers and the population, or even the errors on the need – or not – to wear masks. They target the Prime Minister at the time, Édouard Philippe, but also Agnès Buzyn, Minister of Health between May 2017 and February 2020 – now at the World Health Organization (WHO) – and his successor, Olivier Véran, current government spokesperson. “On the masks, we were wrong, neither more nor less”, had also recognized the latter, in September, at the release of a book. Olivier Véran has not yet been heard by the CJR.
On October 15, 2020, a few weeks after the start of their investigation, the magistrates of the CJR searched the homes and offices of Olivier Véran, Edouard Philippe d’Agnès Buzyn and the former government spokesperson, Sibeth Ndiaye. Other searches took place at the Director General of Health, Jérôme Salomon, and the Director General of Public Health France, Geneviève Chêne. In September 2021, Agnès Buzyn was indicted for endangering the lives of others. She was also placed under the status of assisted witness for voluntary failure to fight a disaster.
As the world began to take fright after the alarming information coming from Wuhan, China, this trained hematologist spoke at the Elysee Palace on January 24, 2020, assuring that “the risks of spreading the coronavirus in the population are very weak”. Before specifying that this analysis could “evolve”. In mid-February, she left the government to run for mayor of Paris, replaced by Olivier Véran. But a few days after her electoral defeat, while France was confined, she created an uproar by saying in The world : “when I left the ministry, I cried because I knew that the wave of the tsunami was in front of us.”
In January 2021, the Anticor association filed a complaint against Olivier Véran for “favoritism” in the management of the “Stop Covid” application, which later became TousAntiCovid. On March 30, 2021, a group of teachers filed a complaint against the Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, accused of “not protecting staff in contact with children” who “spread the virus” of Covid- 19. In November 2021, the CJR for its part deemed inadmissible a complaint against Jean Castex, then Prime Minister. It had been filed by an association of victims believing that the government continued to “navigate on sight” in its management of the epidemic.