Jean-François Copé (LR) is the target of an investigation into his potentially fraudulent use of municipal vehicles for purposes beyond his duties as mayor of Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), the Paris prosecutor's office said this Thursday, confirming information of Monde.
In an April 2022 report, the Regional Audit Chamber (CRC) of Île-de-France pointed out excessive and possibly undue use of municipal vehicles by the person who has run the city of Bossuet since 1995 and almost without interruption. .
Daily trips to the 16th arrondissement
The Anticor association had reported the facts to the courts, and the Paris prosecutor's office confirmed this Thursday that it had opened an investigation in June 2024 at the Brigade for the Repression of Corruption and Tax Fraud (BRCF). The CRC had notably estimated that Jean-François Copé had benefited until 2022 from a service vehicle and two drivers for daily trips from Meaux to Paris 16th, his place of residence, without authorization from the municipal council.
The CRC also considered that during all these years, the use of the vehicle had gone beyond the strict framework of professional journeys linked to his duties as an elected official and that Jean-François Copé did not “demonstrate that these journeys, important and repeated”, at a cost to the city of 126,000 euros annually between 2018 and 2020, “were strictly justified by the exercise of its mandate”. The CRC thus wonders if certain trips were not rather made for Parisian broadcasts of national politics or for Jean-François Copé's lawyer functions.
The former boss of the French right reiterated, as at the CRC, that he “ignored” the need for a deliberation between 2016 and 2022 to be able to benefit from a company vehicle, an error “immediately” corrected “as soon as » that he was “informed” of it.
“Everything is transparent, starting with me”
Regarding the regularity of the use of municipal resources, “things are perfectly clear” according to Jean-François Copé, who emphasizes that the vehicle and the drivers were reserved “strictly” for his “activity as mayor”. “Anticor's main activity is to take legal action against elected officials. The floor is in his [son rôle, NDLR] : it verifies the merits of accusations. In this file, everything is transparent, starting with me, and therefore, I calmly await the progress of this verification,” added the former Minister of the Budget.
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