POLITICS – Jean-Christophe Cambadélis is familiar with courtrooms, having spent some time there during his long political career. On Wednesday, September 4, the former First Secretary of the Socialist Party was found guilty of embezzlement of public funds. The sum of more than 110,000 euros, which was supposed to cover his mandate expenses when he was a member of parliament for Paris, was used to finance a family trip to Prague and a stay in Corsica with his wife, but also to pay his personal rent (for more than 30,000 euros), his taxes, his energy bills and his contributions to the PS.
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The 73-year-old former elected official, now retired from political life although never far from television sets, has “willfully transgressed the law”according to the criminal court, which considers that these facts, “committed by an elected official of the Republic”portent “attack on the values of republican democracy”. Since he has “knowingly used funds made available to him (…) with a deliberate desire for enrichment or in any case a refusal to see his standard of living reduced”Jean-Christophe Cambadélis was sentenced to eight months in prison, suspended, five years of ineligibility and must repay the National Assembly a little over 27,000 euros.
“Without principle or ethics”
Two elements weighed in the balance when rendering this judgment, according to the world : the fact that Cambadélis was a prominent leader of the PS and a national figure recognised by all, since these facts “participate in the distrust that citizens can have towards politics”but also the lack of remorse expressed by the former deputy.
A shrewd strategist, adept at the strings pulled behind the scenes and a connoisseur of the mysteries of the left, “Camba”, as his friends call him, has made it known through his lawyer that he will appeal. He believes that he was not entitled to a ” fair trial ». At the beginning of the year, journalists Denis Sieffert and Laurent Mauduit published a remarkable book on the history of Trotskyism and Lambertism, a far-left political movement to which Cambadélis belonged in the 1970s. According to them, the former leader of the PS constitutes the archetype of “the adventurer of politics without principle or ethics, moreover multiple condemned”.
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