The President of Paris, Maître Olivier Cousi, announced on Monday February 17 the opening of an ethical investigation targeting the lawyer and pamphleteer Juan Branco aiming to " know if he is able, taking into account the elements of the file not known to today, to represent "the Russian activist Piotr Pavlenski, who claims the broadcasting of videos of a sexual nature that forced Benjamin Griveaux to renounce his candidacy for mayor of Paris on Friday. The former government spokesperson filed a complaint against X on Saturday afternoon and an investigation was opened.
However, it was in the course of another investigation that Piotr Pavlenski was placed in police custody the same day. The 35-year-old Russian artist known for his violent and self-injurious performances is suspected of having wounded two people with a knife during an altercation on the evening of December 31 in the Parisian apartment of Juan Branco's partner. A possible conflict of interest, which it is now up to the Bar Association of Paris to resolve.
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Juan Branco was indignant Sunday not to be able to be designated as lawyer of Piotr Pavlenski in the procedure relating to the diffusion of the videos, implicating the parquet floor of Paris. " The public prosecutor's office opposed my appointment, which is extremely rare and which generally takes place only when you are implicated in a case or your participation in this case could harm the interests of the defendant ", he said on Monday morning at the RMC microphone, after denouncing the day before " an unprecedented, very serious infringement of the rights of the defense ".
This remedy is, however, in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure, which provides in its article 63-3-1 that “ in the event of a difference of opinion between the lawyer and the judicial police officer or the public prosecutor on the 'existence of a conflict of interest, the judicial police officer or the public prosecutor seizes the president of the bar, who can appoint another defender '. The public prosecutor's office thus has no jurisdiction whatsoever to prohibit a lawyer from representing his client.
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