For potential ministers, it is not one, nor two, but three checks for which the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) is responsible for the reshuffle. While the resignation of Jean Castex and the appointment of a new Prime Minister or a Prime Minister are still awaited, Monday May 16, the HATVP is studying the profiles of the possible members of the new government. A must since 2013 and the Cahuzac and Thevenoud cases, two former ministers convicted of tax evasion.
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First check: the High Authority, an independent administrative body headed by Didier Migaud, first looks at the tax situation of potential ministers or secretaries of state. A complete check of the tax situation is made upstream, in connection with the tax authorities, and can be supplemented by a more thorough check after the appointment.
Second control: the criminal situation. The HATVP consults in particular bulletin number 2 of the criminal record which contains sensitive convictions such as sexual violence against minors.
Finally, the HATVP assesses the risks of conflict of interest of personalities likely to lead the government or occupy a ministerial chair. The various professional activities and the possible presence in boards of directors are taken into account, as well as the profession of the spouse. Crucial information that can lead to a ministerial red light or a change of portfolio.
New members of the government must also submit declarations of assets and interests to the HATVP, which are checked and then made public. If one of them holds portfolios of shares or other financial instruments, he must entrust their management to an agent, to whom he cannot give orders during his term of office to avoid any insider trading, under the same transparency laws.
All these controls have been entrusted to the HATVP since its creation in 2013, with the law on the transparency of public life. And this role was reinforced by the laws for confidence in political life of 2017.
These checks are necessary but not always sufficient. Because you have to go fast. The High Authority must decide on each case within two days maximum. This is not enough to prevent failures as during the appointment of Jean-Paul Delevoye. The former High Commissioner for Pensions resigned in December 2019 for not having declared several mandates to the HATVP. A year earlier, in September 2018, Laura Flessel, former Minister of Sports, had also submitted her resignation, her tax declaration presenting irregularities. Finally, more recently, Alain Griset, the former Minister for SMEs, had to give up his post at the beginning of December 2021 after being sentenced to six months in prison and three years of suspended ineligibility for incomplete declaration of his assets.