The former first secretary of the Socialist Party Jean-Christophe Cambadélis was refused on Tuesday June 28 a guilty plea procedure which would have avoided a trial in a case of embezzlement of parliamentary mandate expenses for a total amount of 114,000 euros.
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At the end of the hearing, the lawyer for Jean-Christophe Cambadélis told AFP that he was going to think about the advisability of appealing this refusal of approval.
Failure to do so would pave the way for a trial in criminal court.
The former socialist deputy had agreed to be tried during an appearance procedure on admission of guilt (CRPC) at the Paris court.
The CRPC - a kind of "
plead-guilty "
à la française - is based on an agreement between the prosecution and the perpetrator of an offence, who acknowledges his guilt and is offered a sentence.
But a judge must then give the green light in a so-called probate hearing.
During the hearing on Tuesday, the president of the court explained that Jean-Christophe Cambadélis was accused of the embezzlement of 114,057 euros in compensation representing mandate expenses (IRFM) between 2015 and 2017.
"A situation of misfortune"
At the helm, the former elected official acknowledged the facts and accepted the sentence, proposed by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF), of six months suspended imprisonment and one year of ineligibility also suspended.
It has also begun to reimburse the National Assembly.
But the president refused to approve this sentence, considering that it was not adapted to the "
seriousness of the acts (...) committed by an elected representative of the Republic
" and regretting that the PNF did not propose in plus a fine.
The prosecutor had explained a little earlier not to have withheld the fine to take into account "
a situation of misfortune
" of Jean-Christophe Cambadélis and because a prison sentence was "
stronger than a fine
" .
,
".
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In 2018, the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) sent the files of around fifteen elected officials to the courts after checking the variation in their assets between the first IRFM framework rules in 2015 and their end of mandate in 2017. On March 11, the PNF had indicated that nine parliamentarians or former parliamentarians had escaped legal proceedings after having reimbursed the Senate or the Assembly for fraudulent expenses related to the use of their compensation representing mandate expenses, between 2015 and 2017. Three procedures remained in progress at the PNF, including that of Jean-Christophe Cambadélis.
