A man tried for abuse of weakness in Aumetz, between 2005 and 2012, on facts dating more precisely from 2005 and 2006, was released Tuesday, November 24 by the criminal court of Thionville which pronounced the extinction of the public action for prescribed facts.
This man who had known the victim, a retired farmer, for many years, over time became his confidant but also his beneficiary to the detriment of his wife and daughters, at the origin of the investigation and with who the retiree was angry about. In 2005, they had already made a request for curatorship of their alcoholic father, which had been rejected. They will only obtain it in 2012 when the bank accounts and the patrimony have already spun. The man of confidence has indeed benefited from the “largesse” of his old friend by receiving in particular a check of 100,000 € “for services rendered” and bought garages and a piece of land belonging to him for a small sum, considered derisory by the civil party.
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“Lack of evidence of abuse of weakness”
What about the € 230,000 that disappeared from the farmer’s bank accounts between 2005 and 2012 and the € 150,000 placed in an account in Luxembourg and subsequently withdrawn? The man of confidence, if he admits to having “let himself be caught in the gears”, says that the farmer who died in 2014 did not want to leave anything to his wife who had then started divorce proceedings. The daughters of the victim speak of “total control”. “The facts of abuse of weakness have not been demonstrated,” underlines the defense lawyer, Mr.e Pawlik. The prescription, if it usually upsets the civil party, here just as much upsets the defendant even if it is we who raised it at the hearing. Without prescription of the facts, he would have been exonerated for the absence of proof of the abuse of weakness. He had not been placed under guardianship at the time of the facts and that is fundamental. A procedure for annulment of the sales of goods made in 2005 and 2006 is still pending in the civil court.
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