Julien Bayou “was right and the obligation” to make the report, according to a regional environmental adviser

“He was right. But above all, he has a legal obligation to do so”, indicated Tuesday September 27 on franceinfo, François Darmerval, regional adviser of the ecological pole of the Ile-de-France region, while the Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for “embezzlement of public funds”, on the conditions in which the presidential campaign of Les Républicains candidate Valérie Pécresse was organised. This investigation was opened after a report from Julien Bayou.

franceinfo: You are a regional councilor for the Ile-de-France region. Julien Bayou was he right, in your opinion, to make this report to justice?

Francois Darmerval: He was right. But above all, he has a legal obligation to do so. You know that any elected official when he becomes aware of facts which are likely to constitute a crime or misdemeanor, has the obligation to report these facts to the prosecutor. Then the prosecutor is free to prosecute. This is extremely important because the prosecutor needs to know since these are public funds that were used for Valérie Pécresse’s campaign. And Julien Bayou was right to point out these facts which are a settling of accounts between two emblematic characters of the majority of Valérie Pécresse who are Babette de Rozières and Patrick Karam.

Is this report from Julien Bayou a counter-fire to make people forget these current difficulties?

It is an act that was done between the two rounds of the presidential election. Babette de Rozières announced last week on her Twitter account that her book on the poor management of the Ile-de-France region would be released next December. If there were to be counterfire, I don’t know which side it would be on. Afterwards, the presumption of innocence is clearly there. We will see what the prosecutor has to say, what he learned from this information and from the information he may have to know in the context of this investigation. But it is very important that there be an investigation into this point.

There is also Valérie Pécresse’s lawyer, Thibault de Montbrial, who says that this is unfortunately not the first time that environmentalists have used this kind of method in the context of their fight against the majority in Ile-de-France. ?

I recall the damning report of the Regional Chamber of Accounts on the management of high schools. It is still quite overwhelming for the management of Valérie Pécresse. And she has always had to face defamation proceedings, since she took the liberty of attacking a magistrate of the regional chamber of accounts when the latter had produced a report on her management. So we have to look at the facts. Today, we just have a region that is poorly managed.