The “rebellious” MP Mathilde Panot announced on Tuesday December 12 that she would contact the public prosecutor “on facts that could be compared to the corruption of elected officials by Minister Gérald Darmanin”. “Bargaining votes to avoid the rejection of his “immigration” law, against gendarmes, mobile gendarme brigades? These facts, if proven, are a serious attack on democratic exercise! “, she said in a tweet.

Environmentalists, for their part, have called for the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry. “We discovered (…) in the press a certain number of extremely disturbing things, in particular that it would have been promised, negotiated in exchange for votes of support for this text, gendarmerie barracks, police stations and what not I still,” denounced MP Benjamin Lucas during the environmentalists’ weekly press briefing.

He proposed to his colleagues “from the New Ecological and Social Popular Union [Nupes]” to sign “a resolution requesting the establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry to shed light on what would be, if the facts were proven, an attempt at corruption within Parliament, at the very least blackmail.” In the hemicycle, the president of the environmental group, Cyrielle Chatelain, denounced the “villainous methods” of the Minister of the Interior.

A PS deputy contacted by the ministry

The Socialist Party deputy Philippe Brun thus reported to some media, including Agence France-Presse (AFP), that he had been contacted by the chief of staff of the Minister of the Interior, who announced to him – confusing him with his namesake , the Republican deputy Fabrice Brun – that the request for a gendarmerie brigade that he had made for a commune in his constituency was accepted, adding “you know what the minister expects of you…”.

Mathilde Panot, in her letter to the prosecutor, mentions an article from Paris Match, mentioning three Republican deputies approached by the Ministry of the Interior. Questioned by AFP, Beauvau stressed that the minister’s office was “used to responding to requests from parliamentarians. As was the case for MP Fabrice Brun (…) regarding his gendarmerie brigade. »

But the project was “raised in July 2023 and formally validated in October 2023”, and “it was therefore not during the parliamentary debates on immigration that the decision was taken, but several months before”, argues the firm.