The trial of former minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, suspected of illegal taking of interests from 2010 to 2012 while she was deputy to the town hall of Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), ended opened Monday before the Nanterre judicial court.
This suspicion of illegal taking of interests is based on “the fact of having been able to vote for (municipal) subsidies, some of which were likely to be subsequently passed on to the Association for the Organisation of Festivals (AOF)”, chaired by Mrs Alliot-Marie’s father, the president summarised at the very start of the hearing.
The former Minister of Defense, Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs under Jacques Chirac and then Nicolas Sarkozy, aged 77, participated at the time in the votes on municipal subsidies as deputy mayor.
In the viewfinder of justice more precisely, the subsidy intended for the Tourist Office, which paid through an agreement renewed year after year the AOF in the form of services for the organization of a film festival.
According to information collected by investigators, this association would have received in its bank account, between January 2010 and October 2012, more than 260,000 euros, notably from the Tourist Office.
Michèle Alliot-Marie, present at the hearing, defended herself: there was “confusion” in the minds of the prosecution, the budget voted “went to the Tourist Office, which freely decides on its service providers” of which she was not aware in advance, she assured the witness stand, very straight in her dark blue suit.
“Over the 18 years (of the festival’s existence in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, editor’s note), it has always been the AOF that has organised this festival: was it clear that this was disconnected from the AOF? I’m not so sure,” the president adds, however.
The shadow of Bernard Marie, who died in 2015, looms over this technical and old file, particularly when the president reads out the hearing of the director of the Tourist Office at the time.
“Mr. Marie is authoritarian, it is difficult to respond to him (…), he threatened us several times to organize the festival in another municipality,” she told investigators in March 2014.
For the prosecution, there is no doubt, the former right-wing figure should have withdrawn from the votes concerning the municipal subsidy in question.
“Ms Michèle Alliot-Marie did not commit an offence,” her lawyers, Mes Rémi Lorrain and Christophe Ingrain, pleaded to AFP in mid-January when their client was sent back to court.
“We will have no difficulty in demonstrating the innocence of Michèle Alliot-Marie,” added her lawyers, who denounced “serious confusion in the understanding of this case.”
The former minister will appear in court for a second day on Tuesday.
