The case of the accounts of the 2017 presidential election of Jean-Luc Mélenchon was invited yesterday to the Paris court, during a defamation trial opposing the leader of France Insoumise to the rapporteur who had denounced in the media "irregularities" in his campaign accounts.
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Jean-Luc Mélenchon, declared candidate for the 2022 presidential election, sued Jean-Guy de Chalvron, former rapporteur of the National Campaign Accounts Commission (CNCCFP), responsible for validating electoral expenses before their reimbursement by public finances.
Jean-Guy de Chalvron resigned with a bang from the CNCCFP on November 22, 2017, before the end of his work on the accounts of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the grounds that the commission had asked him to modify his "letter of grievances", document in which the rapporteur proposed 1.5 million euros of expenditure to be rejected.
After his departure, the Commission had validated the accounts of the LFI candidate, subtracting 434,939 euros from the 10.7 million declared.
But she ended up going to court in March 2018 for possibly overbilled services, prompting the opening of an investigation, entrusted since November 2018 to the investigating judges.
For Me Mathieu Davy, lawyer for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, "the commission was pushed to this report because of the media relentlessness of Jean-Guy de Chalvron".
The leader of rebellious France attacked the interview granted by Jean-Guy de Chalvron to BFMTV on May 30, 2018, during the revelation of the judicial investigation.
"In this letter of grievances, I said attention there are three irregularities: there is one of a fiscal nature, there is one contrary to the legislation on associations and a third criminal," said the former. protractor on the television set.
“There are maybe 1,500 questionable invoices,” he also said, out of around 5,000 that he and his co-rapporteur were supposed to review.
As examples of illegitimate spending, because not intended to collect votes, the senior official had cited the "campaign team lunches" or the fact of traveling to meet a foreign head of state.
Read also: Expenses, reimbursements ... all you need to know about the presidential campaign accounts
At the hearing, Jean-Guy de Chalvron admitted that this last example did not concern Jean-Luc Mélenchon, but that the latter's trips to Berlin, to meet the Die Linke party, and another in Geneva, had been ruled out. as he had recommended.
"Talking about irregularities, it suggests that there has been fraud", "it is a violent questioning of the candidate", testified at the bar one of the relatives of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Councilor of State Bernard Pignerol, aware of the case.
It is indeed the services provided to the countryside by its association, "the People's Era", that forensic investigators have been combing for nearly three years.
In his capacity as president of the association, he was heard on February 19 with a view to a possible indictment of this structure.
But the questioning has been suspended and must resume in the coming weeks, he told the court.
Jean-Guy de Chalvron's lawyer, Me Pierre-Emmanuel Blard, argued that his client's public interventions "were only intended to alert people to the dysfunctions of the Commission".
The contested remarks were not aimed directly at the candidate, who "in return undertook a long campaign of denigration" of Jean-Guy de Chalvron, added the lawyer, calling for the conviction of Jean-Luc Mélenchon for abusive denunciation.
The prosecutor considered that the words prosecuted were indeed defamatory, but she deferred to the court on the question of a possible exemption under good faith.
The decision is due on April 16.
