The shadow of Eric Dupond-Moretti hangs over the disciplinary hearings of three magistrates
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It is a temporal paradox such as justice sometimes knows how to produce. Three magistrates on whom the Minister of Justice had requested administrative investigations in the summer of 2020 are now going through a disciplinary hearing before the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM). But the conditions under which Eric Dupond-Moretti had ordered investigations concerning them to the general inspection of justice, at the origin of his indictment in July 2021 for “illegal taking of interest”, will possibly be examined by the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) in 2023.
Edouard Levrault, former investigating judge in Monaco, is summoned before the disciplinary panel of judges at the headquarters of the Superior Council of the Judiciary (CSM) on Wednesday August 31. Patrice Amar, first deputy prosecutor at the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), and Eliane Houlette, the former boss of the PNF, will appear before the disciplinary training reserved for prosecutors on September 20 and 21, and September 26 and 27 respectively. . All three had been strongly attacked in June 2020 by Mr. Dupond-Moretti, then a lawyer, and complaints had been filed against them. A few weeks later, having become a minister, he launched administrative investigations into these magistrates, on the basis of which Prime Minister Jean Castex initiated these disciplinary proceedings.
The CSM will find it difficult to evade the debate on conflicts of interest, even if it is up to the Court of Justice of the Republic, and to it alone, that it will probably be up to pronounce on their criminal qualification. François Saint-Pierre, the lawyer for Edouard Levrault and Patrice Amar, intends to bring the sword to bear on this ground from August 31 before the disciplinary panel chaired by Christophe Soulard, the brand new first president of the Court of Cassation and, at this title, president of the CSM.
A legal process?
Edouard Levrault, now vice-president of the Nice court, is accused of a “breach of the obligations of prudence, reserve and delicacy”. The magistrate, whose non-renewal of his secondment as an investigating judge in Monaco in the summer of 2019 had discredited the independence of the Monegasque justice, spoke in several media. He denounced what he saw as an obstacle to his investigations in the Rybolovlev-Bouvier affair while relatives of Prince Albert were targeted.
The main accusation made in June 2020 by Mr. Dupond-Moretti, announcing the filing of a complaint against Mr. Levrault, whose methods he denounced “cowboy”was here “violation of the secrecy of the instruction”. The magistrate had mentioned, in a France 3 broadcast, the case of a senior Monegasque policeman whom he had indicted. It turns out that the future minister was the lawyer.
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