The public prosecutor of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) asked this Wednesday three years of imprisonment with suspension of probation for three years, against the former Minister of the Interior Claude Guéant, tried before the criminal court for fraud concerning his expenses campaign during the 2012 legislative elections.
For his time on probation, the prosecution asks him to justify his activities, to compensate the civil party (the state judicial agent) and to settle his debts to the treasury.
More than 30,000 euros in reimbursement
At the time, the essential man in the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, now 77, was running for deputy in Hauts-de-Seine. The prosecution accuses him of having knowingly reduced the accounts of his electoral campaign and thus having obtained a reimbursement of over 30,000 euros.
“The probity of future elected officials begins with the probity of candidates asking for votes,” said prosecutor Nathalie Foy. “Even if the sums involved are not considerable, this situation should not be trivialized” because “it discredits political life” and “undermines public opinion in the vote,” she said.
Especially since in 2012 Mr. Guéant “was a man of the first order, an extremely powerful man”, former secretary general of the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, then minister of the interior.
He also asked for a fine of 50,000 euros against him and, for five years, the deprivation of his civil rights, the prohibition of public office and of being a company manager.
“I have the feeling of a great injustice”
A four-page letter is at the heart of this investigation. In this letter, sent on January 3, 2012, Pierre-Christophe Baguet, mayor of the UMP (later to become LR) of Boulogne-Billancourt and outgoing deputy of Hauts-de-Seine, announced that he would support Claude Guéant to succeed him in the National Assembly. He had attached the latter’s candidacy statement.
This “letter of wishes is actually a pretext letter” for “a propaganda document that will be distributed in 60,000 copies”, estimates the prosecutor, who reproaches MM. Baguet et Guéant for having requested the financing of this letter from the municipality of Boulogne-Billancourt.
What the two defendants contest. Guéant is the subject of other criminal proceedings. “I live very badly, I have the feeling of great injustice,” he said on Wednesday.
