While he was mayor of Annonay in Ardèche, Olivier Dussopt is suspected of having helped obtain a water management contract from the Saur company. The Minister of Labor will be tried next November.
With AFP
The Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, will appear from November 27 to 30 in Paris for favoritism. He is suspected of having favored, while he was deputy and mayor of Annonay, in Ardèche, the Urban and Rural Development Corporation (Saur), a water treatment company, in winning a public contract in the late 2000s.
For these facts Olivier Dussopt had already been summoned to appear for favoritism by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), last week. His trial will be held before the Paris Criminal Court AFP learned from a judicial source on Friday June 2, confirming information from BFM TV
In a statement, the labor minister stuck to his line of defence: “no corruption is therefore reproached to me“.
“The prosecution considers that there is only one grievance, in this case a formal offense of favoritism in a 2009 public contract, fourteen years ago. I have convinced the prosecution of the merits of my position on the first four points. I will convince the court of the merits of my position and of my good faith on this last point remaining to be decided”.
Olivier Dussopt, Minister of Labor
Olivier Dussopt “keeps the trust” of Elisabeth Borne, said the entourage of the Prime Minister, with whom relations have not always been easy in recent months. “The president likes him. He would have the impression, by removing it, of offering a victory to the oppositions“, estimates for his part one of his colleagues of the government.
The preliminary investigation for illegal taking of interest had been opened against Olivier Dussopt initially about two lithographs by the painter Gérard Garouste which had been offered to him by a company in 2017, when he was deputy and mayor of Annonay. The investigation was to verify possible facts of “corruption” and “illegal taking of interest”.
According to the online media Mediapart, which revealed this next trial for the minister at the beginning of February, the search carried out at Olivier Dussopt by the investigators had updated a possible arrangement around this suspicious public market.
Last February, in the heart of the mobilization against the pension reform, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron had given his “full support” to Olivier Dussop, in the front line on the pension reform at this time.
The Minister of Labor faces a two-year prison sentence and a fine of €30,000.
2023-06-03 09:43:37
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