For years, Jean-François Copé has had a vehicle with two drivers at his service, paid from the municipal budget. But are these costs fully justified? The mayor (LR) of Meaux (Seine-et-Marne) 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 prosecution indicated on Thursday from Paris, confirming information from Le 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. .
Facts reported by Anticor
The Anticor association had reported the facts to the courts, and the Paris prosecutor's office confirmed having opened an investigation in June 2024, entrusted to the Brigade for the Repression of Corruption and Tax Fraud (BRCF).
In detail, the Regional Chamber had notably considered that Jean-François Copé had benefited until 2022 from a service vehicle and two drivers for daily trips from Meaux to Paris XVI, 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. The mayor would not have “demonstrated 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 his mandate”.
The CRC thus wondered if certain trips were not rather made for Parisian broadcasts of national politics or for Jean-François Copé's lawyer functions. When asked, the former boss of the French right reiterated, as at the CRC, that he was “unaware” of 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” 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 the elected official 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 (his role): 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.
“An elected official must be exemplary (…). No one is above the law,” commented on Facebook one of the leaders of the municipal opposition, André Moukhine-Fortier, claiming to go “simply on foot” to the town hall.
