The environmental mayor of Grenoble, Eric Piolle (Europe Ecologie-Les Verts, EELV), was sentenced, Wednesday, September 6, to a suspended fine by the Grenoble Court of Appeal in a case of favoritism in 2015. The court invalidates thus in part a decision rendered in October 2022 by the Valence Criminal Court, which had acquitted Mr. Piolle and his six co-defendants and which the Grenoble general prosecutor’s office had appealed.
Mayor EELV, as well as three co-accused, are found guilty of the charges against them and sentenced to a suspended fine of 8,000 euros, detailed the court in its judgment delivered under advisement. The three other defendants, including the Fusées association, beneficiary of the public contract, are however released.
During the second trial, which took place in June, the Advocate General had requested a fine of 15,000 euros, including 7,500 suspended and had “suggested a symbolic sentence of suspended imprisonment” against Mr. . She had not requested a penalty of ineligibility.
Incomprehension
The mayor, who was absent when the verdict was announced, is “incomprehensible”, his lawyer, Thomas Fourrey, reacted after the hearing. “Eight years of proceedings, searches, hearings, two days of hearing in Grenoble, two days of hearing in Valence. All this for that with a media scandal implemented by the municipal opposition,” he lamented.
Asked about a potential cassation appeal, he explained that “the mayor was thinking: it’s a culpability, but it’s also a suspended fine”. “I am bitter because I was hoping for a confirmed general release,” reacted François Langlois, director general of services at the time. “We are found guilty of favoritism without there being a favored person,” he said.
The Grenoble municipality was accused of having awarded a public contract without competition to an association for the organization of a popular festival which has been held every year since 2014 on one of the main arteries of the city. The Valence public prosecutor’s office had opened a preliminary investigation in May 2018 following a report from the regional audit chamber (CRC), which reported that the municipality had, against the advice of its public procurement department, awarded in 2015 and in 2016 the organization of part of the Tile Festival at the Fusées association, close to the municipal majority.
The town hall, for its part, argued that in this specific case it was a public contract with an adapted procedure for an artistic performance that did not require competition. “Now Mr. Piolle and the kingpins of this patronage operation are sentenced to a suspended fine but they are sentenced”, welcomed Wednesday after the hearing Thierry Aldeguer, lawyer for the municipal opposition, who was a civil party.