Video of the day. Rachida Dati, lobbyist or lawyer? Decryption of the corruption case tried in Paris
“A little respect, including in your gestures! I’m not your housekeeper! », “These are stupid accusations”… So many striking political sequences offered by Rachida Dati. If she is known for her outspokenness, the former minister of Moroccan and Algerian origin, who grew up in a city in Saône-et-Loire, also experienced a meteoric political rise. After serving as Minister of Justice in 2007, under Nicolas Sarkozy, Rachida Dati was involved in several cases.
In total, she is implicated in no less than 14 legal cases. A figure dizzying enough that an “encyclopedia of his affairs”, called WikiDati, was created during his campaign for mayor of Paris. Designed by Kevin Grenier, employee of the NGO Transparency International, this site lists all of her legal disputes, with the aim, according to him, of “reminding why these facts pose a problem from the point of view of the law, but especially from the point of view of political ethics and why they call into question the honesty and disinterestedness of the candidate”.
Up to 10 years in prison
Since September 16, the former minister has been on trial for corruption and influence peddling before the Paris criminal court and risks a sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of 450,000 euros. She is suspected of having received 900,000 euros between 2010 and 2012 to defend the interests of the French automobile group Renault in the European Parliament. In October 2009, while she was a MEP, she signed a fee agreement with the Renault-Nissan subsidiary, RNBV, then headed by Carlos Ghosn. It was almost 10 years later, after the spectacular arrest of the business leader in Tokyo in 2018 for concealment of income, that a wave of internal audits revealed the extent of this remuneration: 300,000 euros per year, in 2010, 2011 and 2012, or 900,000 euros in total.
For the prosecution, this fee agreement would have served to hide a lobbying activity prohibited for a MEP. Maxence Lambert, lawyer at the Anticor association, civil party in this trial, specifies: “The only thing you cannot be is to be a European deputy and be a lobbyist. You cannot be a Member of the European Parliament, judge and party in some way, and lobby yourself, otherwise your mandate is “bought”. » Investigators reportedly discovered in particular that Rachida Dati transmitted her parliamentary questions to Renault in advance. For her part, the former minister claims to have only done her work as a lawyer, referring to cases linked to Morocco, Algeria, Turkey or Iran. But the investigators would otherwise have found very few material traces of the work actually carried out. Involved in several other cases, she firmly denies her involvement in each of them and remains presumed innocent.
