Eric Woerth, the former French budget minister, and later labour minister, now faces being placed under formal investigation over the sale he oversaw of state-owned forest land to a horse-racing company and which a preliminary enquiry has found was concluded at just one third of the real value, Mediapart can reveal.
Woerth, 55, was budget minister in 2010 when he approved the sale, for 2.5 million euros, of 57 hectares of publicly-owned land, which includes a forest, a golf course and a horse racing track, to the Société des courses de Compiègne (the Compiègne Racing Company), which until then had rented the property from the state.
According to information obtained by Mediapart, the true value of the land, which lies close to the town of Compiègne, about 80 kilometres north-east of Paris, has been estimated at between 8 and 10 million euros by a committee of experts who last week submitted their findings to an investigative commission of the Court of Justice of the Republic, CJR. The court’s magistrates are specifically in charge of investigating, and eventually judging, cases of suspected misdeeds by serving ministers.
The deal, which had previously been opposed by state authorities, was set in motion in October 2009 and was concluded in March 2010, just days before Woerth became labour minister.
Woerth is a Member of Parliament for the Oise département (county) in which Compiègne lies, and is also mayor of Chantilly, a town close to Compiègne, celebrated for its equestrian and horse-racing activities in which he and his wife Florence regularly participate. The former minister has denied any wrongdoing.
The CJR was alerted to the suspected irregularities of the sale in November 2010, in a report by France’s then-highest chief prosecutor, Jean-Louis Nadal. In parallel, a group of opposition Socialist Party Members of Parliament filed a joint legal complaint, as civil parties, against all others involved in what they describe as an “illegal” transaction.
Ever since the pronouncement of a 16th-century French law, the Edict of Moulins, publicly-owned forest land cannot be sold to private parties, although in exceptional circumstances plots can be exchanged. For this reason, several previous attempts by the Société des courses de Compiègne to buy the land, beginning in 2003, were refused.
The sale was agreed directly between the budget minister’s services and the horse-racing company, without any tender for alternative offers. The price for the land was fixed by the French treasury office agency France Domaine.
'Sale was part of reducing the national debt'
The CJR has obtained written exchanges between Woerth and agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire, which, according to information obtained by Mediapart, illustrate the then-budget minister’s clear determination for the sale to go through, despite the opposition of Le Maire and the French National Forestry office (ONF) which had successfully blocked previous requests for the purchase.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Importantly, Mediapart understands that the exchanges reveal that the then-budget minister was keen to please Philippe Marini, a senator and the mayor of Compiègne. Marini, like Woerth, is a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, for which he is a senior figure both in the Senate and in the Oise département.
While both men and their wives are active in the equestrian and horse-racing world, Marini is also a close acquaintance of Antoine Gilibert, president of the Société des courses de Compiègne.
The magistrates of the CJR have ordered police from the national financial crime brigade to investigate what links the two couples may have with the Société des courses de Compiègne, and with France Galop, the organization that oversees and regulates horse racing and betting activities in France.
Gilibert sits on the board of France Galop which, together with the PMU, the organization that runs all horse-betting activities in France, part-funded a major restoration of the Compiègne racecourse sitting on the land that was sold and which is managed by the Société des courses de Compiègne.
The magistrates of the CJR last May placed Woerth under the status of an “assisted witness”, giving him the right to be questioned in presence of a lawyer, and it has recently questioned his wife Florence, several senior budget ministry civil servants and directors of the French National Forestry office (ONF).
A source close to the case told Mediapart that, following the official evaluation of the value of the land at some two-thirds more than the price he fixed, Woerth is now very likely to be placed under investigation –one step short of charges being brought – for taking ‘illegal advantage’ of his position in agreeing the sale.
Shortly before Woerth was questioned by the CJR last May, his lawyer Jean-Yves Le Borgne told Mediapart: “On the level of criminal law, this affair doesn’t exist, it is entirely dreamt up.” He said the land in question “was absolutely not” sold at a knockdown price. “To sell at 2.5 million euros, when the annual rent was 43,000 euros, is more like a good deal for the state, knowing that in any case there would not have been another buyer if a tender had been offered.”
Le Borgne insisted that the case was “purely political”. He said the decision to sell the land was part of a programme for “the sale of state-owned property” and “a policy of reducing the national debt”.
Eric Woerth was budget minister between May 2007 and March 2010, and was UMP party treasurer between 2002 until July 2010. He served as Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign treasurer, and became implicated in suspected influence peddling and illegal political funding by the revelations of the L’Oréal-Bettencourt affair. These centre on evidence suggesting that L’Oréal heiress and multi-millionaire Liliane Bettencourt, for whom Woerth’s wife Florence was hired in November 2007 as a financial advisor, had given cash donations to Sarkozy’s campaign funds. Bettencourt, who it was also revealed held tax-dodging bank accounts in Switzerland, hired Florence Woerth on the behest of her wealth manager Patrice de Maistre, who was decorated by Woerth with the Legion d’honneur, France’s highest order of civil merit. Woerth and his wife have denied any wrongdoing.
Judicial investigations into the string of allegations and established evidence of malpractices by Bettencourt’s entourage are currently being led by magistrates based in Bordeaux.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version: Graham Tearse