Claude Guéant's release request will be examined on January 19

The request for release of Claude Guéant will be examined on January 19, explains his lawyer, confirming information from Europe 1. The former Minister of the Interior has been imprisoned since December 13 because he did not pay in the time money tied to a conviction.

Aged 76, he paid 292,000 euros on December 16 to pay off the debt owed to the public treasury following a 2017 conviction which the courts considered did not meet the obligations.

He immediately applied for a modified sentence aimed at his release and hoped that the judge responsible for the application of sentences would study it more quickly.

"I am surprised at such a long delay when everything was settled in three days", declared his lawyer, Me Philippe Bouchez El-Ghozi.

Claude Guéant “not only spent the holidays in prison, but also his birthday (…) He saw it very, very badly.

"

Solidarity with the debt of another condemned man

In detail, "Claude Guéant paid 133,315.95 euros to put his debt to zero", but also settled that of "one of the co-convicts

had not paid his full share and he This is a solidarity debt therefore owed 100% by each convicted person, ”he explained on Sunday.

According to him, this was done thanks to loans from relatives.

Claude Guéant has been detained for a week at the Paris-La Santé penitentiary in application of the 2017 conviction, a first for a former Minister of the Interior.

In the case of the cash bonuses of the Ministry of the Interior, the former right-hand man of Nicolas Sarkozy (president from 2007 to 2012) was sentenced on January 23, 2017 on appeal to two years' imprisonment, one of which was suspended probationary and a 75,000 euro fine.

He was serving this sentence, which became final two years later after the rejection of his cassation appeal, under the conditional release regime.

In early November, however, the Paris Court of Appeal revoked part of his suspension (3 months) and his parole (6 months), considering that he was not making the necessary payments to pay the fine and damages. and interest he had been inflicted on.

It is in execution of these decisions that Claude Guéant was placed in jail for nine months.