Accused of illegal taking of interests, the current Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu, chose to regularize his situation by reimbursing the sum of his dispute, ie 7,874 euros, announced this Friday, June 30 the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office. “This criminal response appears proportionate to the seriousness of the acts attributed to the person concerned” and puts an “end to the disturbance resulting from the offense and to prevent the reiteration of the facts, taking into account the solemn warning thus addressed to the person concerned” , believes the PNF, stating that the minister had “no criminal record”.
“No element has established that Mr. Lecornu had sought to have the interests of the SAPN prevail” (the Société des autoroutes Paris Normandie), from which he received tokens as a director, “over those of the departmental council of Eure “which he chaired, said the same source.
Mr. Lecornu exercised the functions of administrator of the SAPN between April 14, 2016 and June 2, 2017, “in a personal capacity and not as a representative of the local authority which he chaired”, recalls the PNF. “Only the effective transfer of the files involving the SAPN or the renunciation of this interest would have been likely to prevent the commission” of the offense of illegal taking of interests, underlines the prosecution.
The suspicions related to four deliberations voted by Mr. Lecornu, “even though he had an interest in SAPN in his capacity as administrator and beneficiary of attendance fees”. But these four deliberations “were proposed by the technical services of the department and adopted unanimously” during sessions “relating to the vote of very many deliberations”, some of which “are also part of multi-year programming operations” , specifies the Financial Prosecutor’s Office.
“In addition, these operations being part of the relationship between the SAPN and the departmental council, no other economic sector has been affected by these decisions”, notes the PNF. In addition, the investigation, entrusted to the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF), “showed that the presence of departmental elected officials on the board of directors of the SAPN corresponded to a practice old, inherited from the time when the SAPN was a public company” and which “continued after the privatization of this company”, further justifies the PNF.
