On the last day of his trial for concealment of embezzlement of public funds, the mayor of Toulon Hubert Falco, support of the presidential camp, said he feared the loss of his elective mandates, his lawyer asking for release.
The Marseille criminal court should render its judgment around 5:00 p.m.
A strong man of Var politics for 30 years, this ex-LR now rallied to Emmanuel Macron, is accused of having continued to have lunch in the cafeteria of the Departmental Council when he was no longer president, and of having taken advantage of home meals and dry cleaning costs, also paid by the community.
In total, these private meals served to Mr. Falco and his wife on public funds would have amounted to at least 64,500 euros between 2015 and 2018, according to investigators.
The meals were stored in a dedicated refrigerator which gave its name to the file: “Falco’s fridge”.
Addressing the court one last time, the 75-year-old spokesman said how “essential” the stakes were to him. The day before, he had not hidden his dejection after the requisitions of the prosecution who claimed three years in prison suspended, a loss of civil rights and therefore of ineligibility for five years, with provisional execution, that is to say say with immediate effect.
“I am hurt” at the prospect “that they immediately take away what my constituents have entrusted to me,” he retorted. To imagine not being able to “participate in the life of my city, of my country, is the worst condemnation for me”.
“It’s 40 years of a life that are at stake” here, supported his lawyer who requested the release, judging that it was “not at all the case of the century”.
Mr. Falco was having lunch in the department cafeteria when he was no longer working there? “There was a use” which has always existed, supports Me Thierry Fradet.
On the linen of the elected, who would have been washed at the dry cleaners at the expense of the taxpayer: he asks for the release because there is “no mention of Hubert Falco on the notes”, according to him.
Echoing the remarks of the prosecutor who underlined the day before that “a misappropriated euro is a euro that is not in the public interest”, Me Fradet on the contrary denounced a form of “wind from the North” because for him the model of probity which comes from Northern Europe “is not necessarily adapted to our mores”.
Mayor of Toulon for more than 20 years and president of the metropolis of Toulon, Hubert Falco, had led the Var department from 1994 to 2002.
14/04/2023 18:16:57 – Marseille (AFP) © 2023 AFP
