Justice issues dismissal six years later

It is one of the most mysterious aspects of the sensational Alexandre Benalla affair: on June 27, the courts dismissed the case involving the safes, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Friday, August 30, when contacted by AFP. “The judicial investigation did not show sufficient evidence against anyone of having committed the offence of removing a document or object relating to a crime or offence with a view to obstructing the manifestation of the truth”the prosecution said.

One of these safes, which the former Elysée mission officer used to store his weapons, was no longer in his apartment during the search carried out in July 2018, at the start of the scandal that earned him a final sentence of one year in prison for the violence of May 1 that year.

“The contents of the safes removed from Alexandre Benalla’s home that may contain evidence in the investigations opened against him could not be established with certainty”continues the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Six years after this scandal which shook Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, the justice system is therefore closing this chapter, opened in February 2019 and which had fueled suspicions of maneuvers at the top to deceive the justice system. “This outcome was inevitable in law as in fact. It was indeed absurd to prosecute Alexandre Benalla for the imaginary contents of a safe.”reacted Alexandre Benalla’s lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont.