The defenders of the Minister of Justice want to point out the “inadmissibility of the complaints” addressed against him. The Keeper of the Seals is suspected of “illegal taking of interests” in two cases.
New twist in the investigation into the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti: the lawyers of the Minister of Justice have filed with the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) a request for nullity of his indictment for “illegal taking interests” pronounced in July, learned BFMTV.com from a judicial source.
This request, which, according to a source familiar with the matter, raises in particular the “inadmissibility of the complaints at the origin of the referral to the CJR” and “the bias of the public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation”, François Molins, was filed September 7. It must now be examined in mid-October by the commission of instruction of the CJR, the only court empowered to prosecute and judge members of the government for crimes and misdemeanors committed “in the exercise of their functions”, specified this same source, confirming information from Figaro.
The defense of Eric Dupond-Moretti had asked this summer that François Molins be questioned by the CJR but his request was rejected. A decision confirmed on appeal on September 17, further specified the judicial source.
Suspicions of “illegal taking of interests” in two files
As a reminder, Eric Dupond-Moretti is suspected of having taken advantage of his position to settle accounts with magistrates with whom he had had trouble when he was a lawyer, which the principal concerned refutes. The CJR had opened last January a judicial investigation for “illegal taking of interests” after complaints from magistrates’ unions and the Anticor association denouncing situations of conflict of interest in two files.
The first concerns the administrative investigation ordered in September 2020 by the Keeper of the Seals against three magistrates of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) who had his detailed telephone records (“fadettes”) peeled when he was still a star in the courtrooms.
The PNF was then seeking to flush out a “mole” who had been able to inform Nicolas Sarkozy and his adviser Thierry Herzog – a friend of Eric Dupond-Moretti – that they were being wiretapped in the so-called “Bismuth” corruption case, which earned in March a historic condemnation of the former head of state.
The incumbent justice minister indicted
Then vilifying the “barbouze methods” of the anti-corruption prosecution, Eric Dupond-Moretti had filed a complaint, withdrawn on the evening of his appointment as Keeper of the Seals, July 6, 2020.
In the second case, he is accused of having instituted administrative proceedings against a former investigating judge seconded to Monaco, Edouard Levrault, who had indicted one of his ex-clients and whose methods he had criticized. cowboy”. Eric Dupond-Moretti hammered that he had only “follow the recommendations” of his administration.
With this last defensive maneuver for Eric Dupond-Moretti, the extraordinary dimension of this investigation continues to manifest itself: already, on July 1, a search of a rare duration – fifteen hours – had been carried out at the Ministry of Justice. Above all, Eric Dupond-Moretti is, with this legal case, the first Keeper of the Seals to be indicted during his ministerial mandate.