Fifteen people, including François Bayrou, have already been prosecuted in this judicial investigation.
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The Modem and the UDF were indicted in December for “complicity and concealment of embezzlement of public funds” in the investigation into suspicions of fictitious jobs of parliamentary assistants of centrist MEPs, France televisions learned on Thursday 6 January from a judicial source.
Fifteen people, including François Bayrou, former Minister of Justice Michel Mercier and former MEPs Sylvie Goulard, Nathalie Griesbeck and Jean-Luc Bennahmias, have already been prosecuted in this judicial investigation conducted since 2017 by investigating judges from the financial center of the Paris judicial court.
The survey concerns the organization of the work of people hired with European funds as parliamentary assistants for MEPs, but who could have held a job, full or part-time, at the UDF then at the MoDem. The UDF, swallowed up by the MoDem when it was created in 2007, has retained a legal existence.
The Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation in March 2017 after the denunciation of a former elected member of the National Front, Sophie Montel, on the fictitious jobs of employees of 19 of her colleagues from all sides, including two from the Modem: Robert Rochefort and Marielle de Sarnez – who died in January 2021 – right-hand man of the president of the party, François Bayrou.
These revelations had weakened the MoDem, the main ally of President Emmanuel Macron. They had led to the resignation of François Bayrou, then Keeper of the Seals, of Marielle de Sarnez (European Affairs) and Sylvie Goulard (Armies), a month after their entry into government.