Just four days after Mediapart published a secretly-made tape in which French industrialist and senator Serge Dassault admits paying money to 'buy' a local election, fraud squad officers have taken possession of the recording. Mediapart agreed to hand over a copy of the tape after an official request from the authorities.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In the tape, which was recorded in November 2012, Serge Dassault admits paying over money to help 'buy' a local election at Corbeil-Essonnes, south of Paris, in 2010, says what he had done was “banned” and confirms that the money had been paid via the Lebanon. Dassault, who was mayor of Corbeil-Essonnes from 1995 to 2010, and who is still a member of the French Senate, also reveals in the tape that he fears he is being “watched by the police”.
The secret recording was made by two men who went to Dassault's office to complain that they had not received their share of the 1.7 million euros in cash from the so-called “Dassault System” of payments to persuade voters to back him. Specifically they blame a man refereed to as 'Younès B.' for not distributing the cash as agreed to help buy the votes of voters in the south of the town. The 2010 election for mayor of the town was eventually won by Dassault's loyal ally, Jean-Pierre Bechter, who works as a director for the industrialist's media group. Dassault himself had been unable to stand, as the 2008 election which he narrowly won had been annulled by France's top administrative court the Conseil d'État because of “electoral fraud”.
Digital copies of the three brief extracts of the recording broadcast by Mediapart were handed over to police officers on Thursday afternoon at the request of the fraud squad the Division nationale des investigations financières et fiscales (Dniff). They are investigating allegations of electoral fraud in Corbeil-Essonnes.
In a letter dated September 17th, Mediapart's managing editor Edwy Plenel explained to officers at Dniff why, after consulting its lawyers Jean-Pierre Mignard and Emmanuel Tordjman, the news site agreed to comply with their request for a copy of the extracts. “Our information on Corbeil-Essonnes is in the public domain, responding to the legitimate aim of informing our fellow citizens on all that is in the public interest in the life of a democracy. That is why we see absolutely no obstacle in providing you, on a data stick, with the three recordings already broadcast on Mediapart in the context of our investigation and now widely picked up by other media outlets.”
However, Mediapart has witheld the names of the sources of the tape from the police, as it is entitled to under press law.
The day after Mediapart published the extracts, Serge Dassault's lawyers, Jean Veil and Pierre Haïk, announced that their client had been called to give evidence to judges in Évry, near Paris, in connection with an attempted murder that is – potentially – linked to the allegations of election corruption in Corbeil-Essonnes. According to the police, the two men who secretly recorded Dassault last November were shot at three months later. The prime suspect for this attempted murder – in which one of the two men was badly wounded – is Younès B, the man who allegedly did not hand out the election cash and who is said to be close to Dassault. The gunman left France shortly after the attack and is now said to be living in Algeria.
The judges investigating February’s attempted murder wanted to interview Serge Dassault in custody, but the French Senate refused to lift the senator’s immunity. Instead he will be questioned on October 2nd as what is known as an “assisted witness”. This status, which is peculiar to French law, means that there is evidence suggesting the implication of the ‘assisted witness’ in a suspected crime, but that there is not what the French code of law defines as “serious or corroborating” evidence of involvement in a crime, criteria which are necessary for a suspect to be formally placed under investigation.
In the separate Dniff investigation into allegations of electoral fraud in Corbeil-Essonnes the recording – whose existence had already been mentioned by the weekly Le Canard enchaîné and the daily newspaper Le Parisien – may prove to be key evidence regarding the senator. On September 17th his lawyer Jean Veil wrote to the video-sharing website Dailymotion that was hosting the three extracts from the recording, demanding that they be removed.
“These videos, extracts coming from a secret recording made in Serge Dassault's private office, clearly constitute an infringement of privacy, an offence made provision for and outlawed by article 226-1 of the criminal law code,” the lawyer wrote.
In agreement with Mediapart's lawyers and the legal department at Dailymotion it has been decided to withdraw the extracts from the video-sharing site and to host them independently on Mediapart's own server. This means the recordings will now only be accessible to Mediapart readers.
The line taken by Serge Dassault's lawyers has not been to contest the authenticity of the recordings – which Mediapart went to great lengths to check before publishing – nor the handing out of money to Corbeil's residents. His lawyers have instead said that the payments were “philanthropic acts” unconnected with the town's elections, as they noted in a press release.
“He has always been intent on using his fortune to bring help or aid, when that seemed useful and timely, to families or young people in difficulty or wanting to start their own professional undertakings,” the lawyers explain. The difficulty with this explanation is that, speaking to France Info radio in October 2009 after a local council election whose outcome had already been contested, Serge Dassault himself said the opposite. “I have never paid out from my personal wealth for anything [editor's note, in Corbeil]. All that is pure imagination!” he said.
In the same interview Serge Dassault also complained about the decision by the Conseil d'État to annul his earlier election, in 2008. He claimed that the administrative court had no “evidence” and that the judgement had been based purely on “hearsay”.
-----------------------------------------
English version by Michael Streeter