The news put into perspective every Saturday, thanks to the historian Fabrice d’Almeida. Saturday November 18: cases judged by the Court of Justice of the Republic.
The hearings in the trial against the Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti before the Court of Justice of the Republic have just ended. The sentence will be handed down soon. These prosecutions against a minister are not new: since the creation of this specialized court in 1993, no less than eight ministers and two secretaries of state have been prosecuted, including two Prime Ministers: Laurent Fabius and Edouard Balladur.
Laurent Fabius was prosecuted in the contaminated blood affair. A case which shocked France because, in 1985, hemophiliacs were transfused with untested blood products contaminated with the AIDS virus, while there were harmless, heated, but more expensive products on the market. Fabius, then Prime Minister, the Minister of Social Affairs Georgina Dufoix and the Secretary of State for Health Edmond Hervé are accused of poisoning.
The court is created to judge this case which concerns decisions taken in the exercise of their functions. Are politicians the real culprits when it is doctors who made all the decisions and who had medical competence? Georgina Dufoix had expressed this idea, borrowed from the lawyer of another accused, in an interview with a formula that went down in history: “Responsible but not guilty”.
Finally Fabius and Dufoix are released. Edmond Hervé is convicted but exempted from sentence, for “failure to fulfill an obligation of safety and prudence”.
More political trials, or those relating to economic delinquency
Ségolène Royal is being sued for defamation by teachers for issues related to hazing. She was acquitted in 2000. Likewise, in the so-called Karachi affair where former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur is implicated for kickbacks in a sale of frigates. The sums would have financed his campaign for the 1995 presidential election. He was acquitted but François Léotard, his Minister of Defense, was given a suspended sentence and a fine.
In 2004, Michel Gillibert, Secretary of State for the Disabled, is sentenced to five years of ineligibility, three years of suspended prison time and a fine, for embezzlement of some 8.5 million euros. Less serious appears the prosecution against Jean-Jacques Urvoas, in 2019, for violation of professional secrecy for the benefit of MP Thierry Solère. Or Christine Lagarde, former Minister of the Economy, now President of the European Central Bank, involved in 2016 for arbitration in favor of Bernard Tapie in the long-running Crédit Lyonnais affair. She defended herself forcefully as she prepared her candidacy for head of the IMF.
Today there is still a complaint against Edouard Philippe, Olivier Véran and Agnès Buzyn for their management at the time of the Covid pandemic. But their status is not that of accused, as it is difficult to judge complex public health decisions retrospectively.
The Raoul Péret case
In fact, it is difficult to compare our recent trials with the major political prosecutions of the post-war or 19th century. Perhaps a case from the 1930s can be illuminating. In 1931, in fact, it was a Minister of Justice totally forgotten today who was accused and judged by the Senate established as a high court: Raoul Péret. He had delayed the indictment of the banker Oustric. Two weeks later, Oustric stopped paying and caused the ruin of small investors. Péret’s intervention in the proceedings was a scandal. However, the Senate does not condemn him and is content with a reprimand.
As one can see, ministers are not above the law and that goes back a long way. The Court of Justice of the Republic, despite its faults and limitations, fulfills a necessary function.