After 22 Years, Air France Works Council Case Cancelled Due to Unreasonable Delay in Justice

The trial did not take place and the court even canceled the procedure, giving reason to the defense lawyers, relying on the European Convention on Human Rights. It provides that “everyone has the right to have his case heard fairly, publicly and within a reasonable time”.

Seven years between police custody and indictment

The charges date back to 1994-1997. The CGT, which took control of the CCE of Air France, filed a complaint in 2000, audit in support, for fraud and breach of trust against its predecessors in the FO union. The suspicions related to overbilling for the purchase of timeshare residences and to an arranged dismissal which would have allowed the granting of a comfortable indemnity to its beneficiary. The CE then managed the leisure and catering of the 40,000 employees at the time, with an annual budget of 500 million francs (76 million euros), at the time.

The judicial investigation, opened in Bobigny in 2000, saw several successive examining magistrates pass, letters rogatory were issued in Spain (unsuccessful), in Austria, but not very quickly, according to the history of the defense. “Seven years elapsed between my client’s custody in 2005 and his indictment in 2012, and from 2012 to 2016, he was only questioned once by the investigating magistrate”, points out Me Dominique Inchauspé , counsel for the octogenarian defendant.

In 2015, one of the four men died. They are only three to be targeted for forgery, breach of trust and abuse of social good. The order for referral to court was signed in 2016, the trial set for the fall of 2018. A few days before the hearing, the former secretary general of the EC also died. “He died with this sword of Damocles above his head for twenty years, without ever having been able to explain himself”, deplores his counsel, Me Olivier Laude, “scandalized by the length of this procedure”.

“You can’t ask someone to explain themselves twenty-five years later”

In 2018, a procedural defect delayed the trial. Custody reports, however canceled by the investigating chamber, still appeared in the file. Doom! The trial is cancelled. Back to the investigation, new judge, new order, until this trial, in February 2022, where the two retirees were not. Their lawyers had warned that they would raise the nullity of the procedure. The court agreed with them. “We can’t ask someone to explain themselves twenty-five years later”, is satisfied with Me Marc Staedelin.

His client, who disputes the facts, nevertheless expects to receive a new summons, for a trial before the Court of Appeal, certainly not before 2023. Because the Bobigny prosecution, and the CSE (social and economic committee) Air France central contest the decision. “The recourse for violation of the right to a reasonable time, can only give rise, according to the legislation and our analysis, to compensation and not to the cancellation of the procedure”, explains the parquet floor of Bobigny.

A particularly awaited decision of the Court of Cassation

“What can be the meaning of the sentence, thirty years later? asks a magistrate. The Court of Cassation must precisely rule on the subject. After the cancellation of the trial for corruption of the La Défense boiler room market in 2021 for unreasonable delay, by the Nanterre court, then by the Versailles court of appeal, an appeal was filed. The file will be examined on September 22. “The decision will be scrutinized closely”, confirms a judge who recalls the workload of the investigating offices: “120 files on average per judge, with around fifty new cases each year and priority given to cases where there are prisoners”.

Until now, it was in the field of compensation that the damage caused by procedures deemed too slow or very late hearing times was discussed. Among the decisions, there is a sum of 15,000 euros granted to a young woman from Hauts-de-Seine “in compensation for her damage caused by a denial of justice”. She waited nine years for justice to decide on the rape she had denounced as a teenager.

Courts overwhelmed with cases awaiting trial

In Île-de-France, orders for referral to the criminal court, without a trial date, number in the hundreds. In Créteil (Val-de-Marne), 171 cases are ready for trial but still have no trial date, 81 cases in Évry (Essonne), 446 in Paris, 470 in Bobigny, just within the jurisdiction of the Paris Court of Appeal. And for the Versailles Court of Appeal, 191 orders await a judgment date at the Versailles court, 209 in Nanterre, 132 in Pontoise. Or 1700 files in Ile-de-France alone.

“Currently we cannot judge the cases within a reasonable time”, indicated recently Peimane Galeh-Marzban, president of the judicial court of Seine-Saint-Denis, and Éric Mathais, public prosecutor. The creation of an additional correctional chamber is desired in this understaffed jurisdiction, notes Maximim Sanson, vice president and representative of the union of magistrates (USM). In this traffic jam of closed cases, which have sometimes been waiting for four years to be judged, there are cases of drug trafficking, organized crime and violence.