“Pierre will remain as one of the greatest of our time. We will miss him terribly,” reacted the Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti on social networks on Sunday.
Lawyer Pierre Haïk, tenor of the bar who defended Nicolas Sarkozy, Serge Dassault or Charles Pasqua, died at the age of 72, announced Sunday February 19 on Twitter Eric Dupond-Moretti. “Immense sadness on learning of the death of Master Haïk whose talent has inspired more than one lawyer”wrote the Keeper of the Seals, himself a former lawyer. “Pierre will remain as one of the greatest of our time. We will miss him terribly.”
Immense sadness on learning of the death of Master Haïk, whose talent has inspired more than one lawyer. Pierre will remain as one of the greatest of our time. He will be missed terribly. I have an affectionate thought for his wife, Jacqueline, and their children.
— Eric Dupond-Moretti (@E_DupondM) February 19, 2023
“The Bar is losing one of its greatest defenders. We are in mourning”, wrote for his part the president of Paris Julie Couturier, who sent his condolences to his wife, Jacqueline Laffont, and to their children. “‘Each case is a fight that must be fought like a boxer. I never arrived at the trial without the anguish in my stomach. We will keep in us the teaching of Pierre Haïk. With faith. Like a commitmenttweeted the vice-president of Paris, Vincent Nioré.
Prestigious clients
The criminal lawyer, born in Algeria in 1950, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years. The man who joined forces at the start of his career with Thierry Herzog, another star of the bar with whom he had defended robbers and drug traffickers, was also a specialist in political and financial affairs and a fine litigant. He was the lawyer of the Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua, of the businessman Alfred Sirven in the Elf affair, of Michel Roussin, right arm of Jacques Chirac, in the file of the fictitious jobs of the City of Paris or the former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy, whom he defended with his wife, whom he met in 1984.
He had also been the counsel, with the latter, of Patrice de Maistre in the Bettencourt affair or more recently of Alexandre Benalla, ex-project manager at the Elysee Palace under the first term of Emmanuel Macron. But “Pierre wanted above all that we continue to defend those who had trusted us when we started”had declared to the Point Jacqueline Laffont in 2020. “We are more intelligent, in the sense that we know more about people, psychological springs, situations, when we leave our world.”