{"id":10087,"date":"2023-11-06T08:12:57","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T08:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/business\/french-justice-minister-set-for-trial-over-alleged-abuse-of-office\/"},"modified":"2023-11-06T08:12:57","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T08:12:57","slug":"french-justice-minister-set-for-trial-over-alleged-abuse-of-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=10087","title":{"rendered":"French justice minister set for trial over alleged abuse of office"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=66985281-f5ce-4f35-a82a-1f2adde524ad\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Emmanuel Macron\u2019s justice minister is set to face a special tribunal over alleged conflicts of interest and abuse of office, the first time a sitting member of the French government has appeared before the body. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00c9ric Dupond-Moretti, a former celebrity defence lawyer who was an unconventional pick for minister by the French president in 2020, is set to appear on Monday at the special tribunal focused on ministerial misconduct and composed of three judges and 12 members of parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The case centres on whether Dupond-Moretti abused his position to settle old scores with magistrates and prosecutors with whom he clashed during his decades as a defence lawyer. <\/p>\n<p>He will remain in his job during the 10-day trial, throwing a spotlight on Macron\u2019s habit of retaining ministers and advisers who run into legal problems, despite having pledged in the 2017 presidential election campaign to run a clean, transparent government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy would we ask a minister to step down\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009when he has not been convicted of anything or found guilty of anything?\u201d government spokesman Olivier V\u00e9ran said on France\u2019s BFMTV on Friday. The justice minister would be capable of doing his job during the hearing, V\u00e9ran said.<\/p>\n<p>The case \u2014 initially sparked in part by complaints filed by a leftwing union representing judges that opposed Dupond-Moretti\u2019s appointment \u2014 will also test the special tribunal, the Cour de Justice de la R\u00e9publique (CJR). Critics say the body is overly politicised and ineffective because MPs sit alongside judges.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe situation is a very strange one. You\u2019ve got a sitting minister being judged over conflicts of interest by people with whom he has a conflict of interest,\u201d said Paul Cassia, vice-chair of Anticor, an anti-corruption organisation that, along with two judges unions, lodged the initial claims against Dupond-Moretti.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we reproach \u00c9ric Dupond-Moretti with is having used a public function to satisfy private interests,\u201d added Cassia, who will testify in the trial.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dupond-Moretti, a combative orator known for defending Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale\u2019s rogue trader J\u00e9r\u00f4me Kerviel and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has denied wrongdoing. If found guilty, he risks five years in prison and a \u20ac500,000 fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One of the allegations against him centres around whether, once in office, he recused himself sufficiently from a case against another magistrate with whom he had previously locked horns.<\/p>\n<p>The other revolves around the fact that days before becoming justice minister, he filed a lawsuit alleging that the office of the financial crimes prosecutor had invaded his privacy by accessing his phone records and those of other lawyers when it was probing alleged graft by former president Nicolas Sarkozy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dupond-Moretti withdrew his complaint when he was appointed to the government. But soon after, he pursued a disciplinary inquiry into three judges at the financial crimes prosecutor\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Macron has opted to retain Dupond-Moretti, including in a mini-reshuffle in July. The minister\u2019s period in office has been marked by a historic increase in the justice department\u2019s budget to fund extra court staff and judges in a bid to cut the delays plaguing legal procedures, as well as measures to alleviate prison overcrowding.<\/p>\n<p>Several other high-profile members of Macron\u2019s inner circle are facing legal challenges, including labour minister Olivier Dussopt, who will be tried on corruption charges in a different court later this month over allegations relating to when he was a mayor. Alexis Kohler, the president\u2019s top adviser in the Elys\u00e9e, is under formal investigation by the financial crimes prosecutor\u2019s office for allegedly violating conflict of interest laws to favour a Swiss-Italian shipping company with which he has family ties. <\/p>\n<p>Both men deny any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>Macron had pledged in 2017 that any minister named a formal suspect in a legal probe would be required to step down.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Transparency International France, the anti-corruption charity, called for the justice minister to quit when he was ordered to stand trial last October, and opposition politicians have also urged him to resign.<\/p>\n<p>The CJR has previously heard cases against former ministers, including ex-finance minister and current ECB chief Christine Lagarde, who in 2016 was convicted of negligence in public office over a fraudulent payment by the state to late entrepreneur Bernard Tapie. More recently it has been investigating Macron\u2019s former health minister Agn\u00e8s Buzyn over her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But the tribunal has made few convictions and imposed mostly light penalties. Critics say this is because elected officials are involved in the decisions. Several presidents, including Fran\u00e7ois Hollande and Macron himself, have considered abolishing it, and a recent conference of experts aimed at reforming judicial institutions called for it to be scrapped.<\/p>\n<p>Dupond-Moretti himself has been in typically combative mode in the run-up, saying he would defend himself in court and hitting out at the amount of airtime given to the trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis trial should not occupy everything,\u201d he said in an interview on Franceinfo TV last month, responding to questions over how he would handle the affair. \u201cI am presumed innocent. Wait a bit and come to the trial.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/66985281-f5ce-4f35-a82a-1f2adde524ad\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Emmanuel Macron\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>French justice minister set for trial over alleged abuse of office | inFundPros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Emmanuel Macron\u2019s justice\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=10087\" \/>\n<meta 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