Most of the lawyers for the 13 defendants pleaded for acquittal on Friday in the case of fraudulent proxies which had splashed the 2020 municipal elections in Marseille, many highlighting the “chaos” which prevailed in the midst of Covid-19.
The judgment has been reserved and will be delivered on January 27.
On Thursday, the public prosecutor had requested convictions for 12 of the people prosecuted, with the most severe requisition for the ex-LR deputy and ex-mayor of the 11/12th arrondissements of Marseille Julien Ravier: three years of suspended prison sentence and a maximum ineligibility penalty of 10 years.
His lawyers pleaded for acquittal, in accordance with his statements at the bar where he assured that he knew nothing about this system of fraudulent proxies put in place, according to him, without his knowledge by his teams during this very close election which was going to be see France’s second city swing to the left, after a quarter of a century of reign of LR Jean-Claude Gaudin.
Clientelism in Marseille
Julien Ravier gave “zero instructions”, assures Me Philippe Bonfils who attacked the merits of the case, believing that “coaction does not hold”.
“There is a shift towards the fact that we are using this file to judge clientelism in politics, or even clientelism in Marseille. But that is not at all the trial,” he insisted, when questioned by AFP on the sidelines of the hearing.
The defendants had been on trial since Monday for having set up to varying degrees a veritable “proxy factory”, as the prosecutor described it, for the benefit of the unsuccessful candidate for mayor, Martine Vassal, current president of the Bouches department. -du-Rhône and the metropolis, which was not worried in this matter.
Powers of attorney in the names of nursing home residents
The drafting of around fifty powers of attorney in the names of nursing home residents without their consent, most of whom suffered from Alzheimer’s-type illnesses, was particularly shocking.
The lawyer for the director of the nursing home is also one of the few not to plead for his release, recognizing a “slightness”, “a fault”.
But for Marc Bollet, one of the lawyers of Yves Moraine, the other ex-mayor of the sector being prosecuted, “nothing in the file characterizes a structured organization, all of this is more chaos than a methodical organization”.
The sentence requested against Mr. Moraine (three months suspended and 18 months ineligibility) is “disproportionate” and sounds like the “political death sentence” of this close friend of Jean-Claude Gaudin, said his other lawyer Olinka Malaterre.
“This file is not the same outside the Covid period,” insisted Mr. Olivier Danjou, the lawyer for police commander Roland Chervet who validated these powers of attorney outside any legal framework.
with © Agence France-Presse
Related News :