What hides “the aggravated swindle” reproached to the mayor of Roubaix

“Aggravated swindle” and “breach of trust” … The legal qualifiers which are worth summons to the criminal court for fourteen defendants, including the mayor of Roubaix, his first deputy, members of their families and other elected officials of the city, are very heavy. Since the revelation of this meeting of justice, the city is in turmoil and also buzzes with rumors on other legal cases which would be in progress. Mediacités has plunged into the mysteries of the political financing structures involved. And was from surprise to surprise.

What are we talking about ?

The heart of the matter was detailed on September 30 by our colleagues from The voice of the North. Justice accuses the defendants of knowingly organizing a scam of the tax deduction from which any citizen benefits when he makes a donation to a political party. This annual donation is capped at 7,500 euros for a single person (15,000 euros for a couple) and accompanied by a reduction rate of 66% (within the limit of 20% of taxable income). Clearly, if a person gives 1,000 euros, he can subtract 660 euros from his taxes the following year.

The trick would have been to promise any donor a substantial restitution (about 850 euros for a donation of 1000 euros, the political party pocketing only the remaining 150 euros). A diagram allowing to obtain 660 euros of tax reduction for a real donation of 150 euros. This rebate is obviously prohibited by law because it makes it possible to enrich oneself at the expense of the taxpayer, by inflating the actual amount of a donation. Worse! It is not certain that the sums collected by the political party have all been used for its activity.

To fully understand, we must keep in mind that the creation of a micro-party is a precious help for any political personality having the ambition to one day stand for the vote. To campaign, you need money. This is why Xavier Bertrand, for example, has long created his micro-party, the Manufacture. This does not prevent him from doing everything to be chosen as the official candidate of the Republicans, since this party has set aside 8 million euros to lead the presidential campaign. An amount that the Manufacture is unable to provide, as we did not show in this survey.

Guillaume Delbar
is no exception to the rule. With his wife Caroline Delbar, very involved in politics, and his first deputy Max-André Pick, he multiplied the funding structures. The most recent – Roubaix Avenir – was created to finance the victorious 2020 campaign. But justice is interested for the moment in Vivement Demain, a micro-party founded on September 18, 2012 in anticipation in particular of the conquest of Roubaix in 2014. And she seems to have discovered movements of money that have nothing to do with its social purpose.

What more can Mediacités say

Mediacités looked into the accounts of Vivement Demain, the political micro-party at the heart of the judicial investigations, which was officially approved in July 2013.

Between 2012 and 2015, Vivement Tomorrow files its accounts as required by all political parties. Over the whole of this period, the micro-party receives 355,612 euros in donations. A very large sum – especially if we compare it to the maximum cost of an electoral campaign in Roubaix (in 2020, the authorized ceiling was 187,113 euros, of which 47.5% was paid for at most by the State – i.e. 88 879 euros). However, this pot was only used for 20,055 euros for propaganda expenses – in particular to animate the life of the movement outside the election period. Vivement Demain also funded 42,909 euros in aid to candidates in 2013 and 2014 (in the midst of the 2014 municipal elections) but nothing in 2015, despite the holding of a departmental election that year.

The first surprise comes from the amount of the “Other external charges” item: 156,887 euros (cumulative over the period 2012-2015). This item is normally used for miscellaneous expenses, in particular rent and transport costs. However, these amounts to only 4,317 euros and 13,571 euros respectively. Where did the rest of the money go?

In 2015, a large sum was paid to another association, Les Amis Citoyens Engagés (ACE), to which Vivement Demain has entrusted the promotion of its “institutional image” and its “notoriety” through a sponsorship agreement. For this work, Vivement demain pays a lump sum of 85,460 euros to ACE. A colossal amount … especially since there is no trace of this promotional work. ACE, on the other hand, would play a key role in setting up a system of tax evasion. According to information from a judicial source, the return of donations made by Vivement Tomorrow would indeed have passed through this structure.

The Committed Citizen Friends
is a very mysterious association. It was created on November 11, 2015 and dissolved on March 15, 2020 (i.e. the day of the 1st round of municipal elections!) But does not seem to have developed any real activity in nearly five years of existence. Its social purpose is very vague: “To recreate the social link between citizens everywhere in France by promoting and developing conviviality, exchanges and dialogue”.

At the time, the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP) sought to know if the ACE was an empty shell that would be part of the same accounting entity as Vivement Tomorrow. But the representatives of Vivement Tomorrow claim that they were not at the origin of the creation of ACE and that they did not have any executive member sitting within ACE. However, the head office of ACE is located at the home of an individual, rue Carpeaux in Roubaix, which also hosts the association “A future for Roubaix” – the official name of the majority municipal group …

The CNCCFP does not push the investigations further. It is therefore impossible for him to say that the accounts of Vivement Tomorrow would be incomplete. Its verification work is in fact impossible to carry out entirely since there are nearly 600 political micro-parties in France! An abundance “which escapes all control, which does not seem to concern anyone”, lamented Didier Migaud, the president of the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) during a recent conference of the Observatory of the public ethics.

In 2016, the auditors asked Vivement demain for explanations which they could not obtain. As a result, Vivement Tomorrow does not file its accounts when it still has 54,828 euros in cash at the end of 2015 (compared to 92,963 euros at the end of 2014). As stated The voice of the North, one of the defendants will also be tried for “Obstructing the auditor’s verifications”. The consequence is automatic: at the end of 2017, the CNCCFP prohibited Vivement Tomorrow from issuing tax receipts for a period of three years. This is why the micro-party requests a request for withdrawal of authorization, in September 2019.

At the same time, two new associations were created: the first, “VAL Vivre Otherwise Locally”, was approved by the CNCCFP as a political party and declared to the prefecture on November 25, 2019. It filed its accounts for the year 2019, declaring 46,450 euros in donations, but no expense. Its president is Pierre Pick, son of Max-André and today delegated councilor in Roubaix; its financial representative is Max-André Pick, number 2 in the city.

The second structure, called Roubaix Avenir, was created on July 1, 2019, by Guillaume Delbar, his wife and his first assistant. And three months later, on September 24, 2019, the trio proceeded to change the statutes as we revealed in this article. From now on, its “exclusive object” is “to collect all the funds intended solely for the financing of the political party” Roubaix Avenir “”. An essential step to obtain approval from the CNCCFP. The device is being refined in anticipation of the municipal elections of 2020. And the sleight of hand between associations and micro-parties continues. Until justice, during searches carried out in another judicial file, found many tax receipts from micro-parties.

If the financing conditions of the March and June 2020 elections will not be discussed during the hearing on October 7 and 8 of the Lille Criminal Court, they are still worth the detour as we have seen. “I have never been funded for my campaigns by the national, said Guillaume Delbar to Mediacités, September 16, 2021, before his summons to court was known. But we have to finance them. We will come back to this in detail in our edition of tomorrow.

–