Nothing surprises him anymore, not even the water flowing from an electric ceiling light.
“Everything happens here,” sighs this tenant of 62, rue de Meaux, a small six-storey building with a courtyard, in the heart of the 19th arrondissement of Paris.
A stone's throw from the Buttes-Chaumont and the Canal de l'Ourcq, this district has many assets… which disappear as soon as you enter the door.
Walls rotten by humidity, props that support the ceilings, wobbly ground and visible cracks on all floors ... The building has been under judicial administration for more than ten years, there are no more decrees of unsanitary conditions, and a security guard even been hired a month ago, for fear that drug dealers and pimps would move in with those who still live there, including several children.
“The building has already moved… We are afraid that a wall will collapse”, whispers a neighbor, haunted by the dramas of the rue d'Aubagne, in Marseille, two years ago.
Here, the one that everyone holds responsible for their daily nightmare is Frédéric d'Aris, also nicknamed "the Prince", who represented the SCI (real estate company) Meaux and Verdi, companies holding more than 60% of the lots of the co-ownership.
After years of war of nerves, justice also now calls him to account.
He will be tried from this Monday at the Paris Criminal Court, suspected of having precipitated the drift of this building, between 2012 and 2017. This rich heir to a banking family did not yet need to work, as he Explained it himself on the television set of the program “That is discussed”, where he declared to own 150 apartments.
Frédéric d'Aris held 60% of the lots in this building at 62 rue de Meaux in Paris (19th century).
LP / CS
It was in March 2001. Theme of the program "Can money make you crazy?
»Facing star host Jean-Luc Delarue, a couple of lottery winners, singer Jeanne Mas, and Frédéric Aris (at the time without particles).
White shirt, dark jacket, the man with the small stature, then aged 41, came as a couple, with his elegant wife Anna, 28, born, she explains, of a family of Russian industrialists and in love with luxury.
"I started to work, in 1995, following a quarrel with my mother, to prove to her that I was not just daddy's son", develops Frédéric d'Aris, who agreed to be filmed in his daily life.
"If I can win one or two million ... it's still not bad"
Behind the wheel of his luxury car, which is best left in the garage on weekends in “certain neighborhoods”, when “the wildlife” is out, he says.
In the restaurant, where he is served pan-fried foie gras and mashed potatoes, his favorite treat, without even having to order.
In his apartment of 300 m², too inconvenient, "on weekends, when there is no staff".
Count the money?
“A sign of poverty”, he said.
" Poor people ?
You have to be very careful, he smiles.
When they ask for money, you give it to them, because afterwards if they can't pay you back, they fuck you up, and not only do you lose your money but you also lose your friends.
"He recognizes bargaining when he buys a building:" If I can earn one or two million ... it's still not bad ".
But his activity as a property merchant delights him: “It's a lucrative and interesting activity, like in Monopoly!
"With the exception of tax audits," 14 since 1997 ".
The host finds that he does not lack humor.
Rue de Meaux, it is not his humor that marked the spirits.
"He was spitting, shouting, knocking on the door, saying
Pay
!
Even with a peril decree when he did not have the right to claim the rent, remembers a mother.
This accommodation was a disaster, humidity everywhere, the children were sick ”.
She explains that she lived in a studio for 700 euros.
She has since found an HLM, 3 rooms for the same rent, and her children are no longer sick.
The inhabitants questioned who still live there or who have left, wish to remain anonymous, as if there was a climate of fear.
The stories tell of hide-and-seek work, and intimidating "big arms" and a henchman.
"A system that holds together through intimidation and coercion"
They designate Alix B., also judged this Monday.
“My client is just a straw man, used and handled and no better treated than the tenants!
»Defends his lawyer Me Saveriu Felli.
He describes a “system that holds on through intimidation and coercion”.
According to him, Alix B., “judicial interpreter [in the provinces] was lonely when he found himself propelled as an administrator of the Renaissance group because he mastered five languages.
Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, exactly the languages of Aris tenants.
He used him as a screen.
They would have met through the landlord of Alix B. Rue de Meaux, the inhabitants saw them regularly together.
“Frédéric d'Aris didn't live there but he passed by often.
When we did not see him, we said to ourselves that he was in prison, ”says a resident, aware of a few convictions.
Because in twenty years, Frédéric d'Aris has become more familiar with courtrooms than with TV sets.
Sentenced for tax evasion, inheritance for the drafting of a false will, or the media affair of the castle of Frémainville (Val-d'Oise), where "the Prince" was accused of being a sleeper.
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The prosecution described "an operating system based on misery", with a tangle of SCI, real estate investments made with the contribution of his Russian in-laws, rents collected in cash from tenants from Europe from the East and the laundering of more than 6 million euros abroad.
"I did not do as it should but I did not divert anything", was then defended Frédéric d'Aris.
He was finally sentenced in 2016 on appeal to eight months in prison, against four years at first instance.
Obsolete, rents too high ...
At the same time, on the other side of the ring road, the “Prince” was already of interest to the police officers from the Unit for the fight against unworthy housing (Uhli) who were investigating 62, rue de Meaux.
The Abbé Pierre Foundation and the City of Paris had alerted the justice system in 2014. “In 2013, an occupant of 62, rue de Meaux came to see us, his floor had collapsed and after asking his landlord for safety from his home, he was kicked out and his locks changed, ”says Samuel Mouchard of the Abbé Pierre Foundation, civil party.
The Foundation conducted a meticulous investigation and made a connection with a building on avenue de Clichy (17th century), where tenants complained of obsolescence and excessively high rents.
At both addresses, the same management firm and related SCIs.
In this war of attrition, punctuated by complaints and numerous civil proceedings, the inhabitants of the rue de Meaux have played bad luck.
The Mediator and France Telecom river trials, then the confinement, delayed the holding of the trial, which will ultimately take place over three half-days instead of five.
Bad luck again, because the expropriation procedure could not be initiated earlier.
“A dangerous decree was needed and that of 2012 was repealed in 2017 by the police headquarters.
A new decree was taken by the City on January 14, 2020, following the transfer of powers, and we are now considering initiating the expropriation, ”says Ian Brossat, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of housing.
Rue de Meaux, some wonder if "the Prince" who faces ten years in prison, will go to the courthouse on Monday.
His lawyer, Philippe Sarda, told us this weekend that his client refuses to speak and that he is preparing to request a dismissal.
"I can not accept that this case comes to trial after a preliminary investigation of five years within the framework of which not a single act of defense has been dilligenté," he said.
His request will be considered on Monday.