Gifts, perfumes and bribes for social housing: an administrative assistant for the City of Marseille was sentenced Monday to four years in prison, including 18 months suspended, for a vast corruption case of which she was the head of the network.
For these two and a half years in prison, the court issued a deferred committal warrant against the defendant, until she could make
“her arrangements before incarceration”
.
The Marseille criminal court also sentenced her to a fine of 20,000 euros and a permanent ban on holding public office, with immediate effect.
For four years, from 2016 to 2019, Rosina Livolsi, 52, working in the housing department of the town hall of the 2nd and 3rd arrondissements of Marseille, had collected more than 40,000 euros in bribes and numerous gifts by dangling it to applicants the possibility of obtaining social housing.
Around forty victims recorded
“You have permanently undermined the confidence of citizens in their local institutions and you have undermined the social pact, in a neighborhood, in a city where this social pact is particularly questioned and called into question
,” the president explained to the defendant. of the Azanie Julien-Rama court.
The prosecutor had requested five years in prison, a fine of 50,000 euros and an immediate committal warrant.
Around forty victims had been identified,
"people in great precariousness because they live in unsanitary housing, sometimes with children with disabilities, victims of domestic violence or insecurity linked to trafficking"
, observed the court.
“You took advantage of the vulnerability of this public, in a district of Marseille among the poorest in France and even in Europe
,” insisted the president.
The judges justified their severity by
the defendant's
“relation to lying” and
“her total incomprehension of what the public service mission means”
.
She thus admitted to the court that she saw no problem in favoring certain files.
At the hearing, she again claimed the nickname
“Mother Teresa of the 2nd arrondissement”
, saying she had acted
“out of empathy, to help people”
.
A
“spiral”
of over-indebtedness
Dismissed from the housing service in 2017, Rosina Livolsi continued her fraud via accomplices posing as employees of social landlords.
The municipal employee, who had not paid her rent for years, claimed to have found herself in
“a spiral”
of over-indebtedness.
His son, in total financial dependence on his mother, and his ex-daughter-in-law, were sentenced for receiving stolen goods to two years in prison and fines of 20,000 and 10,000 euros respectively.
Against four other accomplices, the sentences are nine and eighteen months in prison, suspended.
Six intermediaries playing touts for Rosina Livolsi were sentenced to sentences ranging from one year in prison suspended to two years in prison including 15 months suspended, the fixed part being to be served under an electronic bracelet.
None of Rosina Livolsi's victims had filed a civil suit.
The administrative assistant will have to pay 4,000 euros in damages to the City of Marseille in compensation for her moral damage and various sums to several social landlords.