Several judges and senior officials working in the judiciary have told Mediapart about deep concerns and tensions in recent weeks over who will become the new head of France's national financial crimes prosecution unit, the Parquet National Financier (PNF).
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The concerns focus on fears of political interference from the government and in particular the Elysée over the replacement for Éliane Houlette, who formally ended her term of office on Friday June 28th after five years as head prosecutor of the PNF. The Élysée has already been accused of meddling in the controversial appointment of Rémy Heitz to the key post of state prosecutor for Paris. And the presidency is known to be watching the selection of the new head of the PNF very closely to the point where, according to several different sources, some candidates who were considered to be too independent have already been ruled out for the job.
Indeed, there is a real fear among some in the judicial world that someone close to the executive will be appointed to head the PNF with the aim of burying the investigations which threaten the government.
Already there have been tensions within the judicial system over the disorganisation surrounding appointing a replacement for what is a major and sensitive job. For though Éliane Houlette bade her farewell on Friday 28th June, as yet the Ministry of Justice has not submitted nominations to the judicial body the Conseil Supérieur de la Magistrature (CSM) as to who should succeed her. This is despite the fact that around 20 people have applied. It means there will now be an interim period without a formal head of the PNF.
On top of this, two senior investigating judges who are leaving the separate panel of judges specialising in probing financial crimes are not being replaced immediately. These are Serge Tournaire, who has been transferred to duties at Nanterre west of Paris, and Renaud Van Ruymbeke who is retiring. This will further increase the already considerable workload on the other investigative judges on the panel – which operates independently of the PNF - and have an impact on some ongoing cases.
Yet justice minister Nicole Belloubet insisted recently that, along with the law relating to children, financial crimes will be her priority. The financial investigation judges and officials working at the courthouse in Paris are, however, more inclined to recall the old adage of former President Jacques Chirac; that promises only commit those to whom they are given. The truth is that for some months a hidden crisis has been hampering France's fight against financial fraud.
Éliane Houlette was appointed as the PNF's first chief prosecutor when it was created in 2014 in the wake of the Jérôme Cahuzac affair which had been broken by Mediapart a year earlier. In the five years since then she has been the visible face of the fight by French prosecutors against white collar crime such as corruption, tax fraud and money laundering. The financial crimes prosecutor has considerable powers and is able to open an investigation in all the areas that come under their jurisdiction. They can also ask other prosecutors to hand over large cases to them.
On the positive side Éliane Houlette has launched and overseen some sensitive investigations – there are currently 522 cases open – and has waded into some of the biggest corruption and tax fraud cases without hesitation. For example, under her the PNF has probed banks such as UBS and HSBC, and politicians such as Jérôme Cahuzac, former prime minister François Fillon and right-wing mayor Patrick Balkany.
Against this, however, several members of the PNF and some investigating judges and lawyers are critical of Éliane Houlette for apparently shutting down or handing over some major investigations. One, for example, was the affair involving GL Events, a service provider for Emmanuel Macron's election campaign, which was left for prosecutors in Lyon in eastern France to handle. Another was the scandal of the Rafale aircraft sold by the Dassault defence and aeronautics group to India during President François Hollande's presidency. In that case no investigation has yet been opened.
Houlette's management style has also raised questions, though the prosecutor is often also described as brave and independent. One member of her team, Patrick Amar, quit in March 2019 having sharply criticised her in a letter to her superior, the prosecutor general at the court of appeal in Paris, Catherine Champrenault.
In private, several prosecutors at the PNF criticise what they call their boss's “authoritarian” and “very personal” management style. They say she does not know how to delegate and that she “either likes you or she doesn't”. The result is that several prosecutors in the unit are already scheduled to leave while the institution's reputation has lost some of its shine. “You never get unanimity,” notes someone in Éliane Houlette's entourage, where there is no attempt to disguise a real “concern” over the nomination of her replacement.
In fact, the choice of a successor for Éliane Houlette is posing a major problem. Mediapart understands that the judicial governing body the Conseil Supérieur de la Magistrature (CSM) has not yet put the issue on its agenda, because the Ministry of Justice has not yet put forward any candidates. This is despite the fact that some 21 people have applied for the job. It appears none of them tick all the boxes as far as the government is concerned.
The direct consequence of this strange situation is that, according to the legal authorities, either a prosecutor from Paris or an assistant prosecutor at the PNF is going to have to step in as temporary head of the unit for an unknown period of time.
Meanwhile, in view of the political and widely-criticised nominations of Remy Heitz as Paris prosecutor and Jean-François Ricard as the first national antiterrorist prosecutor, the judicial world is under no illusions about the ongoing selection process for the financial crimes unit. “The next [PNF prosecutor] will be someone who's in favour,” says an observer familiar with the workings of government and the judiciary.
The issue now is whether the new head of the PNF will be chosen directly by the prime minister's office or by the Élysée itself. President Emmanuel Macron is known to be very worried by developments in the case involving his chief of staff Alexis Kohler, who faces claims - which he denies - of an unlawful conflict of interest. It will be down to the new head prosecutor at the PNF to decide on what happens next in the investigation, which is a minefield for the presidency after the Benalla affair, involving the president's former security aide Alexandre Benalla. The PNF is handling the Russian contract side of that case too.
Under the way that the French institutions work, all state prosecutors are ultimately answerable to the executive. This inevitably gives rise to suspicions and concerns over the potential involvement of the executive in investigations that might involve it.
The prime minister's office told Mediapart: “At this stage the Prime Minister [Édouard Philippe] is waiting for the propositions from the Minister of Justice. As with all the major posts in public ministries, the strength of the nomination rests in the match between the profile of the person concerned and the capabilities that are required. Not to take care over this would seem very odd to the French people given the role of the PNF in the public policy of fighting against tax fraud, corruption, major financial crimes, and also taking account of the importance of the cases handled by the PNF.” The Élysée declined to comment.
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However, behind the scenes the manoeuvring is already well underway. Mediapart understands from several different sources that the current boss of TRACFIN – the Ministry of Finance unit that tracks suspicious financial movements – Bruno Dalles, who was a candidate to be the new head of the PNF, has already been blocked by the Élysée.
A specialist in financial crime, Dalles is seen as one of the more capable candidates. However, it appears that his investigations in the Benalla affair, and in particular into the Russian contracts involving President Macron's former aide, have not pleased the Élysée. Bruno Dalles declined to comment to Mediapart.
Another judge who was potentially in line for the job is Jean-Yves Lourgouilloux, who is currently number two at the PNF. But it is already clear he will not get the top job as he has just been earmarked for a move to Marseille. He, too, declined to comment.
The appointment of the head of the PNF is also being delayed because of the imminent nomination of the new European prosecutor, who will take up that new post at the end of 2010. The French candidate for that position, Jean-François Bohnert, who is currently prosecutor at the court of appeal at Reims in northern France, is almost certain to move to the PNF in some capacity if the Romanian candidate Laura Codruta Kövesi is chosen instead for the European job.
Described as a good professional with a certain talent for diplomacy and who speaks several languages, Jean-François Bohnert would be a reassuring appointment as head of the PNF for the government. Other leading candidates would also potentially be reassuring, with none of them being known to be far to the Left politically. Indeed, several of them have worked in ministerial offices under former right-wing presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
These candidates include Xavier Bonhomme, prosecutor at Pointe-à-Pitre, in the Caribbean département of Guadeloupe, Jacques Carrère, lead advocate general at the court of appeal in Paris, Nathalie Becache, director of the French customs investigations and prosecutions service, and a former prosecutor at Créteil, south-east of Paris, Anne Kostomaroff, director of the agency dealing with seized goods and the profits of crime, the Agence de Gestion et de Recouvrement des Avoirs Saisis et Confisqués (AGRASC), and a former head of the anti-terrorism unit, and Élisabeth Pelsez, an inter-ministerial official in charge of supporting victims.
In addition to the problems within the fraud prosecution unit, there are also tensions regarding the investigating judges on the panel specialising in financial cases who work out of the court system in Paris, and who are independent of the PNF. Renaud Van Ruymbeke, who is well-known for having handled the financial aspects of the sprawling Karachi affair involving arms sales to Pakistan and alleged corruption, the Elf-Aquitaine corruption case, and the cases involving former Société Générale bank trader Jérôme Kerviel, and more recently Patrick Balkany, has just retired. No one has been lined up to replace him as yet, even though part of his job was to share out and allocate cases between the financial expert judges.
Van Ruymbeke's colleague Serge Tournaire, who is particularly known for handling the investigations into Libyan funding of Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign, the Bygmalion election expenditure affair, a case involving former head of French domestic intelligence Bernard Squarcini, and the Kazakhgate affair, is also leaving his post in Paris and taking up a position at the court in Nanterre, west of the capital. He, too, is not being replaced immediately. “Why should the financial panel put up with the burden of two vacant positions?” asks one judge in Paris. “It's causing serious upset in the financial [investigations] panel,” says another judge. A third adds: “Not to speak of the cruel lack of resources of the anti-corruption police in France.”
According to judicial sources, it will take some time to find a replacement for a post of the “profile” that was occupied by Renaud Van Ruymbeke, even though his departure date has been known for some time. In judge Serge Tournaire's case a replacement was found, but he has just gone on secondment – so someone will now have to be found to replace the replacement.
“No posts have been lost from the financial planes, they are vacant positions,” insists Jean-Michel Hayat, the president of the Paris courthouse, who is nonetheless known to be irritated by the current situation. According to him, nothing is likely to change before the end of September.
Among the investigating judges who specialise in financial crime, who rarely have big cases referred to them by the PNF – just 20% of the PNF's cases are judge-led investigations, the rest are preliminary investigations led by prosecutors - moral is no longer very high. Everyone is said to be worried by the spectre of the slow death of the independent investigating judge.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter