Finance Committee: "No withdrawal of Eric Coquerel" planned, according to rebellious MP Mathilde Panot

LFI is closing ranks.

The president of the rebellious deputies Mathilde Panot assured this Monday on France Info that there would be "no withdrawal of Éric Coquerel" from the presidency of the Finance Committee, despite the investigation opened on Tuesday for "harassment and sexual assault”.

“There will be no withdrawal of Éric Coquerel because there is no new element” since the opening of the investigation, declared the rebellious MP, herself at the heart of a controversy.

🗣 Coquerel affair ➡️ "There will be no withdrawal of Éric Coquerel because there is no new element", assumes Mathilde Panot. 'dancing a rock and he touched her buttocks.

“We have to come to our senses.”

pic.twitter.com/QUrBukBmDt

— franceinfo (@franceinfo) July 18, 2022

An investigation was opened on Tuesday, after the complaint filed by left-wing activist Sophie Tissier against Éric Coquerel, and the ecologist deputy and feminist activist Sandrine Rousseau called on him on Friday to put himself, for the time of the investigation, "withdrawn of the presidency of the Finance Committee, of which he was recently elected.

“No new element”

“From the moment a complaint is filed on Monday, the opening of an investigation logically followed this complaint.

So there is no new element, ”said Mathilde Panot for her part.

"From what I heard from what was said by Ms. Tissier (the complainant, editor's note), I do not hear what is sufficient to request a resignation from Éric Coquerel", she continued.

Sophie Tissier, a 43-year-old former figure of the "Yellow Vests", denounces in her complaint, filed in early July, facts "may be similar to a sexual assault" dating from August 23, 2014 in Grenoble, which would have been committed by Éric Coquerel, which he disputes.

She had denounced, on BFMTV, "inappropriate gestures, wandering hands" during an evening organized by the party in 2014, evoking "a salacious, sticky look", "a clumsy flirt" and behavior "outrageous, offensive, harassing" on the part of the deputy.

“What we blame Éric Coquerel for is having in 2014, in a party, danced a rock (with the complainant, editor’s note), and that he would have touched her waist, touched her buttocks and offered to bring back by taxi.

And when she said

, nothing happened, ”insisted Mathilde Panot.

"When this woman herself says that it has nothing to do with the Abbad affair (ex-minister of solidarity targeted by an investigation for attempted rape, charges he denies, editor's note), and that she does not not ask for the resignation of Eric Coquerel, I think we can rely on that, ”she said.

In a column published on July 2 in the JDD, then on BFMTV, the new chairman of the National Assembly's finance committee had denied the "unfounded rumors" of his "inappropriate behavior with women", claiming to have " never exercised physical or psychological violence or coercion to obtain a report”.