Six years of ineligibility required on appeal against the former mayor of Montauban, Brigitte Barèges

Brigitte Barèges, 68, had the opportunity to explain herself again. And she hopes she will regain her mandates. Judged in December 2020, she was sentenced on February 9 for embezzlement of public funds to five ineligibility, 12 months suspended prison sentence and 15,000 euros fine. She appealed and appeared from the start of the hearing very combative.

“I dispute my guilt and all the facts with which I am accused.”

She is accused of creating a fictitious job by paying, out of municipal funds, an employee of the communications department of the mary responsible for writing articles in favor of the mayor in a local weekly. The latter is no longer prosecuted because he has not appealed against the first decision. This Thursday, October 28, only Brigitte Barèges and the director of the publication, the Petit Journal, appear.

A confusion of genres

At the start of this appeal hearing, Brigitte Barèges arrived at the bar with a mask on which was written “I love Montauban”. Despite her conviction eight months ago, she said she challenges her guilt and all of the charges against her.

The president of the tribunal mentioned all these laudatory articles published about her in the Small Journal and during the municipal campaign in 2014. Articles written to make “the pendant to _the Dépêche du Midi_“, called_“the local Pravda”by the director of the Petit Journal. The latter admits that he should have made the mention “infomercial” _ because the articles were invoiced to the municipality, and they were written by a communications officer of the city, who then became the campaign director of Madame Barèges.

Gender confusion between institutional communication and political campaign. Brigitte Barèges rejects the responsibility on the author of the articles, “an incisive feather but a free electron that I no longer controlled”. “I was wrong to have hired him” recognizes Brigitte Barège, who confirms that she personally reread all the articles to validate them, and also “correct the mistakes.”

The one who embodied Montauban for 20 years is now risking her political future.

A heavier sentence requested to prevent him from running again in 2026

At around 3 p.m., the public prosecutor requested a sentence of six years of ineligibility, or one more year “which will prevent him from participating in the next municipal elections“detailed the Attorney General, 12 months in prison suspended as in first instance and a fine of 30,000 euros or double the first conviction.

“Madame Barège, an elected official must be at the service of the general interest. You have used public funds for your personal interest!” thunders the Advocate General, who increases the penalty by one year on appeal, 6 years of ineligibility _“because you have to prevent yourself from representing yourself in 2026._“

Brigitte Barèges had already taken 5 years, the justice therefore throws her head under water.

It’s a “public execution” protest the lawyers of Brigitte Barèges who believe that it is not good that “justice makes politics”. That their client is in good faith, if she paid an agent from the town hall’s com department to publish articles to her glory in the middle of the election campaign, it was only institutional communication, to thwart the hostile monopoly of the Dispatch noon.

At the helm, Brigitte Barège ensures that she has “sworn in as a lawyer on the values ​​of probity. That as an elected official, she has always fought against corruption” .

We will know before Christmas whether or not justice will spell the end of his political career. The decision of the Court of Appeal was reserved for December 14.

Political justice? Moralization of public life?

If the Court followed these requisitions, Brigitte Barèges could not stand for the next municipal elections in 2026, this is precisely what the Advocate General wanted in his indictment.

A “political justice” deplores Maitre Laurent De Caunes, the lawyer of Brigitte Barèges: “There is currently a tendency for judges to take power over politicians. We see it at work here, justice seeks to punish the chosen one, because he is elected. So it is by the election, or the inability to run, that we want to punish him ”

The decision will be known on December 14, but for Arnaud Hilion, the elected socialist opposition in Montauban, the Barèges page has already been turned.

“These are requisitions that seem logical to me, with the will of the legislator to moralize public life. I think that was expected by a large part of the Montalbanese population. ”

“The prosecutor wishes in his requisitions that Ms. Barèges cannot run for municipal elections in 6 years. For me, I have the impression that the page Brigitte Barèges has already been turned for a year. Indeed, we are still operating today. with a system already in place to keep the mayor’s chair warm for Madame Barèges. _we have already moved on to another page in Montalbanian political history._“

Montauban as a civil party

At first instance, the City of Montauban had refused to become a civil party, leaving three opposition municipal councilors, two Communists and one Socialist, to do so. Since then, the community has changed its strategy. This Thursday, it was the City’s lawyer who pleaded. The City became a civil party in appeal, following a municipal deliberation in the spring. She defends herself against her former boss, and offers compensation. The damage that can be imagined much less than if the opponents had submitted their own assessment. The city’s lawyer did not ask for anything, he “charged” the former chief of staff to the mayor of Montauban accused of not having supervised the excesses of the city’s communication service.

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