Prosecutors on Wednesday requested a one-year suspended sentence against French Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti, who was charged in Paris with conflicts of interest related to his previous work as a lawyer in an unprecedented trial in the country’s history.
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Government heavyweight Mr Dupond-Moretti, 62, is suspected of using his position as minister to settle scores with judges with whom he had disagreements as a lawyer.
Despite the minister’s “persistent denial”, the conflict of interest was “obvious”, said the representative of the public prosecutor’s office in his indictment before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), an exceptional jurisdiction responsible for assessing members of the government.
This process, unprecedented for a sitting Minister of Justice, has weakened Mr. Dupond-Moretti, who has, however, retained the confidence of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron for the time being.
Mr. Dupond-Moretti, who was appointed General Surprise Guardian of the Seals in the summer of 2020, is in the crosshairs of the judiciary because he ordered an administrative investigation on the sidelines against tax judges who had his telephone records checked when he was still a lawyer in an investigation against the former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy.
He is also accused of opening an administrative investigation against a Monaco investigating judge who had indicted one of his clients and whose “cowboy methods” he had denounced.
Judges’ unions denounced a conflict of interest and filed a complaint against the minister at the end of 2020, marking the beginning of an investigation that led to his trial in court.
However, in his indictment on Wednesday, the prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Rémy Heitz, assured that this procedure was not the result of a “revenge” on the part of the judges, for which lawyer Dupond-Moretti had found very harsh words.
The minister “did not listen to the warnings addressed to him, he took a step that he should never have taken, twice,” he explained, sharing his “conviction” that “the criminal offense of illegal interest taking is well founded.” “