The Paris public prosecutor’s office filed an appeal on Thursday February 8 against the three acquittals handed down on Tuesday during the judgment in the case of the MoDem European parliamentary assistants. Laure Beccuau, Paris public prosecutor, contests the acquittals of François Bayrou, Stéphane Thérou and Pierre-Emmanuel Portheret on the grounds that “the facts characterize the offenses charged and the evidence of these offenses is gathered against all the defendants”.
At first instance, the Paris criminal court notably acquitted the party president, François Bayrou, while condemning the MoDem, which had been fined 400,000 euros as a legal entity.
The public prosecutor had requested thirty months of suspended imprisonment, a fine of 70,000 euros and three years of suspended ineligibility against the former Minister of Justice, presented as the main person responsible for the organization of this system of embezzlement. funds. In their indictment, the prosecutors insisted on the contrast between the “values ??of probity and exemplarity” promoted by Mr. Bayrou and this practice.
The president of the court, Gérald Bégranger, did not follow the prosecution and considered that if it seemed “very likely” that acts were committed with “the authorization of Mr. Bayrou”, “no element allows ‘claim that [he] had knowledge of the non-execution of parliamentary assistant contracts’. The benefit of the doubt therefore went to the former Minister of National Education.
