Trial opens of ex-French minister who allegedly employed phantom assistant
A former French justice minister is due to appear in a Paris court accused of embezzling public funds by allegedly creating fake jobs, including one for a phantom part-time parliamentary assistant called Hubert Devillers.
Michel Mercier is also said to have employed his wife as his assistant in the senate – the upper house – for four years, and then one of his daughters who was reportedly living in London at the time.
The allegations came to light in the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné in August 2017, six months after the then prime minister, François Fillon, was knocked out of the presidential race after he paid his wife for nonexistent work.
The Fillons were found guilty of embezzling public funds in 2020, a conviction upheld on appeal in May this year.
Mercier’s wife, Joëlle, is reported to have been paid €84,525 between 2005 and 2009. The former minister’s daughter Delphine, an art historian, is believed to have been paid €2,000 a month, totalling more than €37,100, and the fictitious Devillers “at least €30,000”, according to investigators.
Mercier, 75, who served as minister for rural affairs and regional planning from 2009 to 2010 and as justice minister from 2010 to 2012 under the rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy, has denied that the jobs were fake.
His lawyer André Soulier is expected to argue that Joëlle Mercier opened her husband’s post and ran his diary while his daughter advised him on politics and culture from London.
Investigators found no evidence that any of the three carried out any public work on any of Mercier’s computers. Mercier will argue he never used a computer but gave work instructions verbally. His daughter admitted she had used a computer but told police it had been lost along with relevant documents during a house move.
“There was no exchange of email or paper or traces of links of a professional nature between Michel, his wife and his daughter,” the police report stated. It is not yet publicly known what role Devillers played.
The former minister is also on trial for another alleged misappropriation of taxpayers’ money while he was president of the Rhone general council between 1990 and 2013, when his wife is accused of organising numerous events at public expense while not being an elected official or a council employee.
Soulier told Libération: “If money was obtained in a non-legal, nonconventional manner, let my client reimburse it. Why make a spectacle of this? Does it help the republic?”
The trial is expected to last eight days. Mercier, who has five children, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. His wife and daughter have been accused of receiving stolen funds and being accomplices in the embezzling of public money.