New prosecutions for Thierry Solère. The LREM deputy from Hauts-de-Seine and adviser to Emmanuel Macron was indicted on Monday for five new offenses, AFP learned from the Nanterre prosecutor’s office on Thursday, February 3. The elected official is suspected in particular of having used part of his mandate expenses for personal purposes, between 2012 and 2019.
Thierry Solere was indicted for “embezzlement of public funds”, “passive influence peddling” and for breaches of reporting obligations to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP), after being heard by two judges from training on January 28 and 31. These indictments are part of a judicial investigation opened in Nanterre in 2019, in which Thierry Solère was already indicted for eight counts, including “tax fraud”, “fictitious employment” and “illicit financing of expenses electoral”.
His lawyers Jean Reinhart, Mathias Chichportich and Marion Lambert-Barret qualified these “new charges” of “equally unfounded” than the former, and asserted that their client was “innocent of any offence”.
At the end of his interrogation, Thierry Solère was first indicted for embezzlement of his mandate fees. Until recently, the use of this envelope, intended to cover the rental of an electoral office, its travel or its correspondence was not controlled and fell within the full gray zone, allowing some elected officials to withdraw additional income. Like a dozen other parliamentarians, Thierry Solère had been reported to justice in December 2019 by the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP).
On Monday, the elected official was also indicted for “embezzlement of public funds” for having employed his mother-in-law as a collaborator in the National Assembly between 2016 and 2017. On the other hand, for the employment of his wife as a parliamentary collaborator between 2012 and 2017, he was placed under the status of assisted witness, less incriminating than that of indictment. Thierry Solère, current political adviser to the president, was also indicted for “passive influence peddling”, suspected of having “used his influence in order to obtain markets” to real estate companies between 2007 and 2017 and to a consulting company between 2011 and 2012.
Investigators are also interested in his statements to the HATVP in 2014, suspecting him of having failed to declare “a substantial part of his interests, in particular in respect of his activities as a consultant in the period preceding his election”, or to have “minus certain income in his declaration of patrimonial situation”, said the prosecution. This file dates back to 2016, when a complaint from Bercy was filed for “tax evasion”, leading to the opening of a preliminary investigation. Thierry Solère was then spokesperson for the LR presidential candidate François Fillon.