The Paris Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday, July 2, 2024, on the request of Culture Rachida Dati to end the prosecutions that have been targeting her since 2021 in the Paris part of the Carlos Ghosn affair. The court rejected the appeal of the former Minister of Culture on the statute of limitations of these facts.
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Indictment for “passive corruption”
The former Minister of Justice, former Minister of Culture and former mayor of the 7th arrondissement of Paris has been under investigation since July 2021 for corruption and passive influence peddling by a person holding a public elective mandate. She is suspected of having received €900,000 from RNBV, a subsidiary of the Renault-Nissan alliance, without compensation for real work, between 2010 and 2012, while she was a lawyer and Member of the European Parliament (2009-2019).
The investigations also sought to determine whether this fee agreement could have been used to mask lobbying activity in the European Parliament, which is prohibited for any elected official. In this case, Carlos Ghosn, who lives in Lebanon, has been the subject of an international arrest warrant since April 2023. The former automobile magnate and the Minister of Culture deny any irregularity.
An attempt already in 2021
The former minister’s defense had already raised the statute of limitations of the facts before the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal in 2021, in vain. On May 7, Rachida Dati had once again asked the Paris Court of Appeal to drop the charges against her. The investigating chamber was seized of two requests: one to validate the statute of limitations of the alleged facts, the second to grant her the status of assisted witness.
