The former mayor (UDI) of Noisy-le-Sec, in Seine-Saint-Denis, Laurent Rivoire, is accused of having irregularly awarded millions of euros in public procurement contracts.
When you add it up, the sum is staggering. Around twenty disputed contracts are involved in this procedure for an estimated amount of some 3.4 million euros in contracts.
Laurent Rivoire, 58, former mayor of Noisy-le-Sec from 2010 to 2020, appears before the Bobigny criminal court for “favoritism”, “illegal taking of interests” and “influence peddling”. The prosecution requested a three-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 130,000 euros against him, together with a three-year ineligibility sentence. He estimated that favoritism was characterized for a dozen markets.
He claims his innocence
“I was completely new to a lot of things”, meanwhile argued the former city councilor. As to whether he would do it again, the former notary replied: “I certainly would have done the same” while recalling that there was “rules, I respect them”. “I did not know the ordinance of 2005” relating to public contracts, first entrusts the former chief magistrate of the municipality, “new to many things” when he takes up his post.
Then his inexperience diminishes over the course of his interrogation. “I knew that there were thresholds, formalities depending on the thresholds, but I did not know which texts it came from”.
At the helm, Mr. Rivoire, gray jacket over white shirt, explains having had to straighten out the mixed economy company (SAEM) Noisy-le-Sec Habitat, also being CEO of this HLM office managing around 2,200 social housing units.
Between dirt and degradation of housing, we must “deal with the most in a hurry”, cleaning and investing to renovate. And then the tenants of the park, “it’s 15% of the population”, it is right to “do not upset them especially with the approach of the elections”, he declares in his hearing, read at the hearing. “I never took money from the SAEM”, he defends himself, he who asks the justice to “wash (his) honor”.
“Mafia practices”
“The investigation hasn’t gone far enough to find out where this money was going. It’s a shame …”, deplores for his part Jean-Louis Péru, the lawyer of the HLM office, civil party alongside the City and the anti-corruption association Anticor.
“In this file, there are elements which relate to mafia practices”, considers the lawyer, pointing out that “the first victims” are SAEM and its precarious tenants.
On Wednesday, six business leaders took turns to explain how they had landed the twenty or so irregular contracts targeted by the procedure.
At his side, eight defendants are tried, including a communications consultant who would have been the real leader of the SAEM. The prosecutor requested a two-year suspended prison sentence and a 75,000 euro fine against him, and a similar sentence for a second consultant who had benefited from fraudulent contracts. She asked for the release of the other six defendants for lack of sufficiently characterized elements.
Reelected in 2014, Laurent Rivoire lost his chair in the last elections, won by the communist Olivier Sarrabeyrouse. He remains an opposition municipal councilor but claims to have “turned the page on politics” after his recent defeat.
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