This time, no more Covid-19 alert, lawyers strike or proximity to municipal elections to postpone his trial again. Cédric Pommot (DVG), the former first assistant of Monique Delessard (PS) in Pontault-Combault, should indeed be tried this Wednesday by the criminal court of Melun.
The former elected, aged 48, and leading candidate in the municipal elections in 2014 and 2015 – each time beaten – must respond to the justice for infringement of the freedom of access or the equality of the candidates in public procurement. And this, over a period which spans between January 2012 and April 2013. He was then chairman of the tender committee.
These are alleged irregularities in the award of certain public contracts in the city, discovered in 2014 by the victorious team of Monique Delessard, which lead Cédric Pommot (various left) to appear. Two companies would have benefited from apparently rigged ratings of the tender commission, of which Cédric Pommot was the president from 2008 to 2014: one carried out pruning services and the other offered its services to the town hall. in terms of centralized management.
Tongues loosen on a trip
The case would have started in the summer of 2013. At that time, Cédric Pommot, accompanied by elected officials and municipal officials, had taken part in a bicycle trip to reach Caminha (Portugal), the town twinned with Pontault-Combault. During this trip, under the influence of fatigue, tongues would have loosened. It would have been mentioned a consideration which would have benefited Cédric Pommot, a former elected official and their respective companions. Back in Pontault, participants would have alerted Monique Delessard.
The elected then decides to take a step back with her first deputy, whom she had appointed a few months earlier to succeed her at the head of the town hall. In September 2013, Monique Delessard therefore announced that she would finally be a candidate for the 2014 municipal elections. “The conditions are not met to pass the baton,” she confided at the time.
After this disavowal, Cédric Pommot announces giving up political life, before changing his mind. In January 2014, he left the PS to lead a “center left” list in the municipal elections. Beaten, he files an appeal. The Council of State finally gives him reason and new municipal elections are organized in 2015. Once again won by Monique Delessard.
A long investigation
In the meantime, the judicial machine was set in motion since the elected official, the day after her re-election in 2014, had reported suspicions of irregularities in the award of public contracts to the public prosecutor of Melun. Then followed a long investigation which therefore resulted in the referral to the criminal court of this file which has been agitating since the political life of the fourth city of Seine-et-Marne.
Recall that the trial of Cédric Pommot has already been postponed three times: in April 2019, in January 2020, as well as in March. After claiming to have withdrawn from the city, he finally called in the wake of voting – without success – for Stéphane Finance (LR) for the municipal elections of March 2020, won in the first round by Gilles Bord ( PS).
At his side in court, the managers of the incriminated companies and former director of city services
This Wednesday, Cédric Pommot will not be alone on the bench. He will be accompanied there by the former director of technical services of the city, as well as the managers of the two companies presumed to have favored in the choices of the city at the time.