Former investigating judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, known for having notably investigated high-profile political-financial cases such as Elf, Urba and Cahuzac, has died at the age of 71.
“Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke has left us. France loses a great magistrate (judge) and Justice an immense servant. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones.”announced Friday the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, on X (ex-Twitter).
Retired since 2019, Mr. Van Rymbeke, with a slender silhouette, wearing a mustache and thin glasses, was one of the emblematic judges in the fight against corruption in France and has investigated some of the most sensitive political and financial cases in recent years. decades.
Among his instructions are notably the Urba affair, on the secret financing of the Socialist Party, investigations into Jérôme Cahuzac and the Balkany couple, or even the complex affair of the Taiwan frigates. In 2008, he also led the investigation into the giant frauds of Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel.
For years, Mr. Van Ruymbeke, born August 19, 1952 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, also tracked alleged flows of hidden financing by Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007.
His path crossed that of the former president on several occasions, from the Clearstream affair, which had threatened the judge with a disciplinary sanction, to that of Karachi on the financing of Edouard Balladur’s campaign in 1995, of which Sarkozy was the spokesperson.
“Servant of justice”
The announcement of his death, the cause of which was not specified, aroused emotion in the legal world.
Mr Van Ruymbeke “embodied the image of the independent and courageous investigating judge, and will leave an indelible mark in the judicial history of our country”reacted Rémy Heitz, attorney general at the Court of Cassation.
Former Marseille prosecutor Dominique Laurens welcomed “a great servant of justice, a free and determined spirit who inspired generations of magistrates through his fight against economic and financial crime and corruption”.
“We have lost an exceptional magistrate who spent his life working tirelessly in the service of Justice”underlined the Bâtonnier of Paris, Me Pierre Hoffman.
A great slayer of tax evasion and tax havens, the former judge noted that“There is a lot of money at our doors and no one is doing anything”during the last interview given to AFP, in November 2022.
The magistrate, a great football fan and also an accomplished pianist, had called for “the need for awareness”, “at a time when States have significant deficits, big needs for hospitals, for the energy transition”.
Bluntly, he urged States to recover lost revenue from “from tax evasion to drug trafficking and corruption”.
“Opaque circuits”
In his latest book “Offshore. Behind the edifying scenes of tax havens » (Ed. The Links that Liberate), Mr. Van Ruymbeke denounced the little “political will to eradicate the system”to track down “the opaque circuits of tax havens”.
Faced with multinationals who “raise profits in countries where taxes are low”he had called for this “that the law evolves”.
His satisfaction lay in the establishment in 2016 of the Judicial Convention of Public Interest (Cjip) which allows companies suspected of corruption, influence peddling or tax evasion to escape criminal prosecution by paying a fine.
In recent years, heavyweights like Airbus (2.1 billion euros in 2020), Google (500 million euros in 2021) or McDonald’s (1.25 billion in June 2022) have gone to the cash register to put an end to legal investigations.
With AFP
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