A former French justice minister was on Monday brought before a Paris court accused of embezzling public funds by allegedly creating fake jobs, including one for a phantom part-time parliamentary assistant called Hubert Devillers, reports The Guardian.
Michel Mercier is also said to have employed his wife as his assistant in the senate – the upper house – for four years, and then one of his daughters who was reportedly living in London at the time.
The allegations came to light in the satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné in August 2017, six months after the then prime minister, François Fillon, was knocked out of the presidential race after he paid his wife for nonexistent work.
The Fillons were found guilty of embezzling public funds in 2020, a conviction upheld on appeal in May this year.
Mercier’s wife, Joëlle, is reported to have been paid 84,525 euros between 2005 and 2009. The former minister’s daughter Delphine, an art historian, is believed to have been paid 2,000 euros a month, totalling more than 37,100 euros, and the fictitious Devillers “at least 30,000 euros”, according to investigators.
Mercier, 75, who served as minister for rural affairs and regional planning from 2009 to 2010 and as justice minister from 2010 to 2012 under the rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy, has denied that the jobs were fake.
His lawyer André Soulier is expected to argue that Joëlle Mercier opened her husband’s post and ran his diary while his daughter advised him on politics and culture from London.
Investigators found no evidence that any of the three carried out any public work on any of Mercier’s computers. Mercier will argue he never used a computer but gave work instructions verbally. His daughter admitted she had used a computer but told police it had been lost along with relevant documents during a house move.