Sold out on Monday 24 October at the Thionville courthouse. On the benches of the public, about twenty victims and their relatives. Owners of wood plots in the north of the Moselle and in Messina, who one day sold their land to the accused at low prices, others who one day discovered that within their family heritage located in the heart of nature, all the oaks had razed to the ground without their knowledge.
Total amount of damage: over € 250,000. Because the price of wood has soared. And this market, which has become flourishing, pays off those who are interested in it.
Build a forest heritage
The defendant was really interested in this affair. He wanted, as others have done before him, to build a forest heritage. The problem: justice accuses him of abusing his status as agent of the Regional Center for Forest Property, whose mission is to develop sustainable management of private forests, to easily identify plots to be acquired. Goods that could have been financed by his he forestry company.
Another reproach: the 30-year-old has, and recognizes it, got his hands on land that did not belong to him, and of which he granted the right to cut all the trees to the timber trading companies, against the cold of cash.
“The parquet left you at the edge of the forest”
At the helm this Monday, the ex-agent, dismissed, who must answer 17 counts for fraud prevention, assures him: «I slipped, I used their plots. But in a context of sharp rise in the price of wood, I was under pressure from both the market and companies that needed raw materials. I’m not the only culprit. “
In the sights of his advice, all these companies that look to French private forests, and some of which have had business with his client. “The parquet floor prevented you from seeing this whole world of wood, it left you at the edge of the woods. Monsieur’s mistake was that he sold plots that did not belong to him to companies that now declare themselves victims. Which I doubt. My client has committed civil, not criminal, offense. “
Three years of imprisonment required
Not at all for the taste of the prosecutor, who raised, as presented by the president of the court, “a mixture of genres” in the Moselle. And to request three years of imprisonment, two of which with suspension of probation, compensation obligations to victims, prohibitions from exercising public service and any activity related to a commercial activity, and the confiscation of seals.
For their part, the lawyers asked for release, in particular as regards the orientation of the file which should not have been corrected, but should, in their view, have been civil matters.
Approved on January 24, 2023.
