DUPOND-MORETTI. Suspected of illegal taking of interests, the Keeper of the Seals will face a trial before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR). Éric Dupond-Moretti is accused of having used his position as minister to settle old disputes with magistrates.
[Mis à jour le 28 juillet 2023 à 15h45] Éric Dupond-Moretti, the Keeper of the Seals, is facing charges of illegal taking of interests. This Friday, July 28, 2023, the Court of Cassation issued a decision stating that the Minister of Justice will be entitled to a trial before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR). In this case, the minister is suspected of having used his power to settle disputes with three former magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) as well as a former Monegasque investigating judge, confrontations which date back to his career as a lawyer. .
The request for judgment against Éric Dupond-Moretti before the CJR was made by the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation, the only court competent to try ministers for acts committed in the exercise of their functions. In response to this request, Patrice Spinosi, Éric Dupond-Moretti’s lawyer before the Court of Cassation, defended seven appeals concerning alleged irregularities that occurred during the procedure before the CJR, as well as an eighth appeal contesting the judgment of October which ordered the referral to trial of the minister. Following the announcement of the trial, Éric Dupond-Moretti’s lawyer expressed his client’s confidence in justice and declared that the latter was calmly awaiting this legal step, reports The Parisian. For his part, Matignon said that the Keeper of the Seals retains “all the confidence of Élisabeth Borne.
Éric Dupond-Moretti will therefore be entitled to a trial before the Court of Justice of the Republic. But what is the risk? Article 432-12 of the Penal Code states that: “The fact, by a person holding public authority or charged with a public service mission or by a person vested with a public elected office, of taking, receive or retain, directly or indirectly, an interest likely to compromise its impartiality, independence or objectivity in a company or in an operation for which it is, at the time of the act, in whole or in part, responsible for ensuring supervision, administration, liquidation or payment, is punishable by five years’ imprisonment and a fine of €500,000, the amount of which may be increased to double the proceeds of the offence.
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” . A few minutes after the decision of the Court of Cassation, Matignon announced that the Keeper of the Seals retains “all the confidence of Élisabeth Borne.