The national financial prosecutor's office has completed its preliminary investigation into the working time of Marseille municipal agents and is considering a possible trial for the former mayor LR Jean-Claude Gaudin and six of his relatives, we learned from concordant sources on Friday.
According to Jean-Claude Gaudin's lawyer, Me Sindrès, the PNF plans to prosecute the former mayor for "negligence which allowed the embezzlement by third parties of public funds".
The PNF accuses the former mayor of "inertia" in the modification of the working time of the agents, "which he firmly disputes", according to Me Sindrès who assures that "the system criticized today dates back to previous terms of office" .
Undue overtime and absenteeism
"The preliminary investigation is over and the PNF has opened the adversarial phase in this case", for its part indicated the national financial prosecutor, adding that "any prosecution decisions (would) be taken at the end of the adversarial phase ".
The lawyers involved in this case, who received the PNF's report, have until December 23 to send them their observations or requests for additional documents.
"There is no decision for the moment on a possible trial, the adversarial phase can reshuffle the cards," said a source close to the case.
“Abracadabrantesque” undue overtime, unjustified absenteeism, both at the Samu social and in museums or libraries: the conclusions of the PNF report, unveiled on Friday by La Provence, overwhelm the management of Jean-Claude Gaudin at the helm of the second city of France for 25 years.
Four years of investigation
At the origin of the initiation of this four-year investigation, the revelation of a false pointing system of employees of the Samu social.
In addition to Jean-Claude Gaudin, according to La Provence, his chief of staff Claude Bertrand, the director general of services Jean-Claude Gondard and his deputy Jean-Pierre Chanal, the two directors of human resources Henri Sogliuzzo and Yves Rusconi, and the former -director of Samu social René Giancarli, are also likely to be prosecuted.
Newsletter - Most of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
At the end of 2019, the regional chamber of accounts had issued two very critical reports on the management of Marseille, the working time of municipal officials to the state of schools, including a "worrying" financial situation.
