Convicted of embezzlement, the boss of the Lyon right will have to resign

A severe blow to the helmet for the Lyon right. Its leader in the metropolis, Philippe Cochet (LR) was found guilty of embezzlement of public funds this Wednesday, December 11 in the affair of the fictitious employment of his wife Laetitia, we learned Le Figaro from consistent sources. He received three years in prison, including a prison term in the form of house arrest, but above all a five-year ineligibility sentence. If he has 10 days to appeal, the sentence was accompanied by provisional execution, as is now required by law. According to the jurisprudence of the Council of State, the former deputy, also mayor of Caluire-et-Cuire for 16 years, will therefore be declared to have automatically resigned from his mandates. The ineligibility penalty also covers the next municipal election in 2026.

The Paris judicial court followed the requisitions of the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF), also pronouncing the confiscation of the former parliamentary office of Philippe Cochet, valued at 320,000 euros. The judges even went further concerning the wife of the man who was a deputy from 2002 to 2017, Laetitia Cochet, sentenced to two years in prison. The courts found them guilty of the alleged embezzlement after the revelations of a journalistic investigation by Lyon Capital and France Info in 2017, in the context of the Pénélope Fillon affair.

One million euros in damage

“As Ms. Cochet's work cannot be established, except for some occasional services to her husband, the employment could be fictitious,” pointed out the Anticor association, which had become a civil party following its filing of a complaint in 2021, at the origin of the procedure. On the scale of the 15 years of employment contract linking the MP and his colleague, the damage would amount to 639,000 euros, specifies the association. Not to mention the 94,000 euros in unemployment benefits received when she lost her job in 2017, with the defeat of her husband. France Travail also became a civil party. The couple will have to repay these amounts.

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During the hearing held at the end of August, the couple denied the accusations made against them. It appeared that certain interlocutors may have considered Laetitia Cochet as her husband's parliamentary attaché. But the MP's other collaborators said they were unaware that his wife was part of the team, indicating that they only rarely met her on duty, even though she was the best paid of them, to the tune of 5,600 euros. gross per month. However, she was not assigned any office or specific function, according to the PNF investigation.

The employment of a family member by an MP was only prohibited in the summer of 2017, after the presidential and legislative elections. At the time of the acts alleged against the Cochet couple, 18% of deputies were in this situation, with activity attested in the majority of cases.