Posted
Update
A trial against the close guard of Nicolas Sarkozy opens, Monday, October 18. Justice is looking into the case of the Elysee polls, when the presidency had ordered, at the start of the five-year term, several million euros of opinion polls, without making a call for tenders.
Part of Nicolas Sarkozy’s close guard at the Elysee Palace is found, Monday, October 18, in court. The former secretary general of the palace, Claude Guéant, and Emmanuelle Mignon, the former director of the cabinet, are among others on trial for embezzlement of public funds through negligence. Between 2007 and 2012, they would have ordered surveys for several million euros, in particular from the company of Patrick Buisson, the shadow adviser to the Head of State.
According to the company Anticor, which lodged a complaint, these surveys were ordered in defiance of the rules for tendering and public contracts. An approach that Anticor’s presenter, Elise Van Beneden, describes as“extremely serious”. “This leads to an immense waste of public money, here we are talking about public contracts to the tune of 4.7 million euros”, she specifies. This is partly the subject of certain polls that attracted the attention of the association: the image of the Sarkozy couple in public opinion, or the popularity rating of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then possible opponent of Nicolas Sarkozy for the 2012 presidential election. The former head of state, protected by his presidential immunity, is not prosecuted.