Investigation Under Consideration for Conflicts of Interest in Nice Bar Association’s Decision to Allow Deputy Mayor to Practice Law Without Certification

The possible opening of an investigation is “under study”, indicates the Nice prosecutor’s office. Justice was seized on suspicion of conflict of interest in the decision of the bar association to authorize the first deputy mayor of Nice Anthony Borré to wear the black robe of a lawyer without having passed the certificate of aptitude . A report from Jean-Christophe Picard, elected EELV to the city council, points to the role that Me Adrien Verrier, the president of Nice, also the city’s lawyer, would have played in this decision.

He also criticizes the rapporteur for the candidacy, a former chairman, of being linked to the city as a defender of a semi-public company in which the municipality has the majority. “They should have announced their link of interest and deported. Not voting is not enough to protect them. What is needed is not to weigh in on the decision at any time, ”assures Jean-Christophe Picard. Me Valentin Cesari, former president of the bar of Nice, also considers the position of the current president to be “unspeakable”.

A “collective” decision

Implicated, Me Adrien Verrier underlines that although he chairs it, he is not a member of the Council of the Order and therefore cannot vote: “I do not take any decision, it is not I who decided of the rapporteur nor instructed the file”. He refutes any situation of conflict of interest and indicates that he only had a purely “administrative” role.

Anthony Borré, who is not affected by this report, did not wish to comment. Marc Concas, lawyer and elected representative of the city of Nice in charge of ethics, believes that “there can be no conflict of interest because the decision of the Council of the Order is collective and it has been perfectly executed because conditioned to an oral examination that [le premier adjoint au maire] has succeeded “.

The procedure for exemption from the certificate of aptitude for the profession of lawyer (Capa) requires in particular to have exercised for at least eight years functions of a legal nature. To obtain this exemption, Anthony Borré availed himself before the Council of the Order of having been between 2011 and 2020 chief of staff to the mayor of Nice. Another lawyer from the Nice bar has lodged an appeal to have the Bar Council’s decision annulled, a claim which will be examined by this body on May 25.