Bastien Lachaud, Insoumis deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis, was indicted on September 22 for “illicit loan of labor”, “forgery”, “swindle” and “attempted swindle” in the investigation into the accounts of the presidential campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2017, Franceinfo learned this Thursday, confirming information from Mediapart.
Investigation into Mélenchon’s campaign accounts
During the 2017 presidential campaign, Bastien Lachaud was the treasurer of The era of the people, an association created to ensure the logistics around the candidacy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Judicial information was opened at the Paris court in November 2018 on the use of public funds during the last campaign of the leader of La France insoumise.
The deputy denies
“This judicial information was opened in November 2018, nothing happened for almost three years and strangely, things are accelerating a few months before the presidential election”, reacted with franceinfo the lawyer of Bastien Lachaud, Me Mathieu Croiset. “It is an employee who is reproached for having lent himself in an illegal framework of labor, or to consider that an employee lends himself is completely absurd”, adds the lawyer.
“Regarding the attempted fraud, the Era of the People association has not been indicted, and despite everything the employee is. There is therefore a wobbly imbalance”, continues Me Croiset. “On the merits of the case, we reproach an overbilling or the electoral code specifies that it is necessary to apply market prices”, he concludes.
France Insoumise defends Bastien Lachaud
“The absurd accusations against Bastien Lachaud testify to an empty investigation, artificially kept alive”, reacted La France Insoumise in a press release, published on Thursday. The party also denounces “a calendar that owes nothing to chance”, with the approach of the presidential election of 2022, when the start of the “date more than 36 months ago”. “It is made public at the time when the revelations of the newspaper Mediapart evoke the intervention of Brigitte Macron within the framework of the investigation targeting Mimi Marchand and Nicolas Sarkozy. We are not fooled by this attempt of diversion”, can we read in this press release.
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