The investigation into sexual assault and harassment against the chairman of the National Assembly’s finance committee, Eric Coquerel (La France insoumise), has been dismissed, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned on Monday February 20. from a source familiar with the matter. Launched after accusations by left-wing activist Sophie Tissier, the procedure ended on February 10 because the offense was insufficiently characterized, the Paris prosecutor’s office told AFP.
Ms. Tissier, a 43-year-old former figure of “yellow vests”, had filed a complaint in early July 2022 at a police station in the Paris suburbs. She denounced facts “may be similar to a sexual assault” dating from August 23, 2014 in Grenoble, which would have been committed by Mr. Coquerel. The Paris prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation on July 12 for sexual assault and harassment. Mr. Coquerel, who disputes these accusations, had refused to speak on the subject, saying only that he did not feel “weakened” at the head of the Assembly’s finance committee.
“Ms. Tissier intends to use all legal remedies” to challenge this classification without further action, “and remains a victim of the behavior” that she denounced, reacted to AFP her lawyer, Etienne Lesage.
“Supported gestures”
His client had told the investigators that during a dance party, at the end of a day of conferences, Eric Coquerel had “supported gestures”. “His hands were sticky and slid over inappropriate body parts…he brushed my butt repeatedly,” she said. The activist said she had “made him understand that he [l] bothered and [l] indisposed”. As the evening continued at a nightclub, he allegedly “gripped her insistently by the waist and hips” and then sent out invitations to meet him at the hotel, she said.
Ms. Tissier had made public her accusations against Mr. Coquerel just after the latter’s accession, on June 30, 2022, to the strategic post of chairman of the finance committee of the National Assembly. He had refused to step back for the duration of the investigation, as requested by, among others, the ecologist deputy and feminist activist Sandrine Rousseau.
The leader of LFI, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, had given him his support. “Mesquine reply against Eric Coquerel intended to smear him without cause. Complete solidarity with him,” he tweeted when the charges were revealed.