Thin, with an emaciated face, wise glasses on his nose, the man has practically spent his entire career at the Caisse d’Epargne. “He stayed there for almost thirty-eight years,” assures Me Caroline Vabre, one of his two lawyers.
He was successively branch manager in Janville, Bonneval, Châteaudun and Vernouillet. It was in this last bank branch that his troubles began, in 2015.
“A man came to see me. He called himself Tarik,” he explained yesterday at the bar of the Chartres court, where he was tried for complicity in fraud. “He came to offer me a mortgage for one of his acquaintances. »
6 million euros defrauded: fifty defendants and thirty lawyers at the Chartres court for a river trial
The former branch manager, now 65, continues his story: “The subscriber was already a client of Caisse d’Epargne. He had had a few incidents, but nothing dramatic. I was able to give him the credit he was asking for. »
From then on, a climate of trust seems to have been established between Tarik and the banker. “He offered to introduce me to other files, Pakistanis, who wanted to invest in real estate. »
In total, in two years, nearly thirty-eight loans have been granted, for a total amount of more than six million euros.
“Were you aware that payslips and tax notices were falsified? “Asks the presiding judge.
” No not at all. I carried out checks to verify the concordance between the income and its taxation. Everything stuck. I didn’t go any further,” he said.
However, he acknowledges that he did not have Tarik sign a business provider contract. “I never asked him his identity. The question before the court judges is whether the banker voluntarily participated in the scam allowing many members of the Pakistani community to buy houses. Or if he was simply guilty of negligence, when half of the loans, which exceeded his delegation, were approved by his superiors.
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“They all knew that I was sorting things out a bit”
The one he only knew by the nickname of Tarik, and who actually has another first name, is 50 years old. He admits having made fakes and received commissions from his clients, once the loans have been released.
“They all knew that I was arranging the file a bit so that the credit would pass,” he admitted to the judges. He asserts that many of them “work on the black market. They don’t have payslips. A situation that earned him also being suspected of money laundering, the sums used to repay the loans being of undetermined origin, in most cases.
On the other hand, he clears the banker: “He was not aware of anything and he never asked for a commission. »
According to him, he was content to make the bride a little more beautiful, in order to allow his friends to access the property. Moreover, all the loans in question are honored by the debtors.
In addition to prison sentences, with or without suspension, the defendants risk a lot. They bought their house through the crime of fraud. At the end of the trial, they could be seized by justice.
In this case, the court could force them to continue to repay the remaining monthly payments, for houses they no longer own.
At the end of the week, after the prosecutor’s requisitions, the court will put its decision under advisement. The judgment will certainly be made before the summer holidays.
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