The ax fell for Hubert Falco. The mayor of Toulon and president of the Toulon-Provence-Mediterranean metropolis was sentenced, Friday, April 14, to three years in prison suspended for concealment of embezzlement of public funds and, above all, to five years of ineligibility with immediate effect, which will result in the loss of his mandates. According to the procedure, after a conviction for ineligibility accompanied by a provisional execution, the prefect of the Var must issue an order signifying the termination of the mandates of the local elected official concerned.
Céline Ballerini, the president of the Marseille criminal court, considered that the “duty of exemplarity was totally flouted” by the elected official, ex-Les Républicains and rallied to Emmanuel Macron. Mr. Falco left the court with his head down and without a word. Justice reproached the strong man of the Var for having continued to have lunch for free in the cafeteria of the departmental council, when he had not been its president for more than ten years, and for having taken advantage of meals at home and laundry costs, also paid from public funds from this community. These meals were stored in a particular refrigerator, hence the name of this folder: “Falco’s Fridge”.
In a long statement of her decision, which she is accustomed to, the president of the Marseille criminal court told her: “We heard the witnesses say that you were an excellent mayor, that you had done a lot. “But that is not the question”, she added, because the facts, “by their smallness”, show “an obvious lack of respect” for the institutions and show that “the county council remained your territory “. Not to mention the “steps that were revealed by wiretapping” during the investigation and which “testify to this contempt for the rules and the desire to escape certain realities”, added the magistrate.
64,500 euros in benefits
In total, these private meals served to Hubert Falco and his wife, an employee of the county council, would have cost the taxpayer at least 64,500 euros between 2015 and 2018, according to investigators. That’s 1,500 euros per month.
Speaking of “real scandal”, the public prosecutor Mathieu Vernaudon estimated Thursday that even if “we are not on a embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of euros”, “a embezzled euro is a euro which does not go to the public interest”. He had claimed three years in prison suspended, the confiscation of 55,000 euros, but above all a loss of civil rights for five years, which leads to ineligibility, with provisional execution and therefore in principle a loss of elective mandates with immediate effect.
“I am hurt” at the prospect “that they immediately take away what my constituents have entrusted to me”, had declared in his last words to the criminal court the one who has been mayor and president of the metropolis of Toulon for more than twenty years. years. Imagining no longer being able to “participate in the life of my city, of my country, this is the worst condemnation for me,” added the 75-year-old elected official.
It is “not at all the case of the century”, argued his lawyer, Thierry Fradet, castigating this “wind from the North” which brings from Northern Europe a model of probity “not necessarily adapted to our morals”. “It’s forty years of a life that are at stake,” he insisted, demanding the release of his client and emphasizing the “relative weakness of the file”.
During the trial, Hubert Falco firmly denied the accusations of meals prepared especially for him, as accused among others by Laurent Defraize, former head of the kitchens of the department, a witness who has since committed suicide.
On the other hand, he acknowledged: “Yes, I had lunch at the general council because I had to work with the president” of the community at the time, Marc Giraud, who was sued in this case for embezzlement of public funds. His lawyer also demanded his release. Marc Giraud was forced to give up his chair in 2022, after another conviction for embezzlement of public funds.
Who says “exemplary career” says “exemplary attitude”
The prosecutor demanded a two-year suspended prison sentence and five years of ineligibility against him, asking that he not be “sentenced as harshly” as the first defendant. Because for the prosecutor, Hubert Falco is indeed “the final beneficiary, the one who decides” and considered the departmental council as “his house, his stronghold”. He had chaired this community from 1994 to 2002.
During the trial, about twenty witnesses cited by the mayor of Toulon paraded to attest to his “probity”. Yes, he has undoubtedly had “an exemplary career” and “he has done a lot for the Var”, admitted Me Alain-David Pothet, the lawyer for the anti-corruption association Anticor, civil party just like the Unsa departmental union of the Var territories. But who says “exemplary career” says the need for an “exemplary attitude”, he pleaded.
The Var departmental council, whose funds were allegedly embezzled, according to the prosecution, did not bring a civil action.
