There is little risk of being bored at the Bygmalion trial, which takes its name from the public relations and events firm at the centre of the case. Often in court proceedings involving politics the lawyers outdo each other in their waffle and each defendant adopts a predetermined role in the process. But things are very different in this delayed court case concerning the illegal funding of former president Nicolas Sarkozy's failed 2012 presidential election campaign. After just two days of hearings, on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st of May, the old fault-lines and animosities on the defendants' side are already clearly visible.
There are 14 defendants in all, and ex-head of state Nicolas Sarkozy is the only one of them not to have turned up in court to hear the case so far. He is reportedly only planning to appear when it is his turn to give evidence in the trial, which was postponed from March 17th because of the illness of one of the defendant's lawyers.
The case is centred on the funding of the former president's failed bid to get re-elected at the 2012 presidential election. After the election the Sarkozy campaign accounts were initially rejected because of a relatively small overspend of 360,000 euros over the 22.5-million-euro legal limit. But when the Bygmalion scandal broke in 2014, it soon emerged that the campaign had in fact spent nearly double that legal limit, largely on advertising and public meetings. Ultimately the judge-led investigation into the affair put the total campaign outlay at 42.8 million euros. Prosecutors claim that to hide this colossal overspend from election auditors, campaign staff arranged for a friendly public relations firm, Bygmalion, and their events arm Event & Cie to use fake bills, and charge much of the expenditure to the UMP party rather than the campaign itself. As well as illegally hiding the campaign overspend, this move also left the UMP with crippling debts.
In addition to Nicolas Sarkozy the accused include senior election campaign staff, UMP party officials, accountants, and executives at Bygmalion and Event & Cie. They face a variety of charges, including forgery, the use of false instruments, fraud, breach of trust, and receiving the proceeds of and complicity in the illegal funding of an election campaign. If convicted, some face jail terms of up to five years and fines of up to 375,000 euros. Sarkozy himself faces the lesser charge of the “illegal funding of an election campaign”. Prosecutors say that the former president – who in March was convicted of corruption and influence peddling in an unrelated case - knew that his campaign was massively overspent but that he ignored advice to keep expenditure within the legal limit. All deny the charges.
The first day of the Bygmalion trial was largely devoted to dry legal arguments from the defence lawyers. But on Friday May 21st the first verbal shots were fired between the various defendants, via their lawyers. A number of these lawyers were united, it is true, in asking the court for more information to clarify the role played in events by Jean-François Copé, the former minister who at the time of the 2012 election was secretary-general of the UMP, in the sizeable expenditure the party made at the time. But even here their reasons for doing so were markedly different - and in some cases almost diametrically opposed.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
For example, lawyer Chistophe Ingrain, representing Sarkozy's 2012 campaign director Guillaume Lambert, said that the documents that he had presented to the court could “no longer allow Jean-François Copé to be heard [just] as a witness”. In his view they proved that the then-boss of the UMP was “at the heart of the financial decisions” taken by the party in the spring of 2012 to help its candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Already it felt as if the old Sarkozy-Copé infighting was being replayed in the courtroom.
The former bosses at Bygmalion, meanwhile, had other targets in their sights. Not only has the firm lost everything as a result of the scandal, the UMP – now renamed Les Républicains (LR) – is now also asking it for 16 million euros in damages and interest. The party is a civil litigant joined to the criminal proceedings, as it is entitled to be under French law. Luc Brossolet, lawyer for Franck Attal, former head of its events subsidiary Event & Cie, was almost speechless over the issue. He ferociously mocked the theory that several officials at the UMP had taken part in embezzlement unbeknown to the party's leadership, and said that everyone in the party leadership had known about it, Jean-François Copé chief among them. The UMP, Luc Brossolet told the court, was an “inappropriate, morally unworthy and legally dishonest” civil litigant. His words created something of an atmosphere in the courtroom.
Lawyer Christian Saint-Palais, representing Jérôme Lavrilleux who had been Copé's right-hand man in the UMP and also the election campaign's number two, meanwhile pointed out that his client had cleared exonerated Copé. The barrister then ridiculed Guillaume Lambert. “He was campaign director, he took part in campaign meetings every week with people from the UMP, there were budget forecasts, and he comes and tells us that he didn't know there was a problem?” mocked the lawyer.
These internal defence skirmishes left the prosecutor Nicolas Baïetto unmoved. He said that the documents relating to Copé that had been revealed in the press and then produced in court were nothing new and did not produce any fresh information. “Everyone had their full say about the UMP's financial situation and the 55 million euro loan during the investigation,” said the prosecutor, referring to the money the party had been obliged to borrow to plug the huge deficit left by the presidential campaign.
Another lawyer representing Guillaume Lambert, Rémi Lorrain, returned to the attack. “Jérôme Lavrilleux was engaged in an operation to protect Jean-François Copé which is beginning to fall apart,” he declared. “The affair of Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign was in fact an affair about Jean-François Copé financial management of the UMP,” the lawyer claimed. By way of example, Rémi Lorrain pointed to the “thousands of euros spent by Jean-François Copé on private jets and for his dressing room at political rallies, even though his party was in ruins financially”. Such exchanges have set the tone for the trial.
After an adjournment the court announced that the defence applications would be considered en bloc and addressed in the court's final judgement, which will not be for some months, though the trial itself is due to end on June 22nd. The court hearing will resume on Tuesday May 26th with the questioning of former Event & Cie boss Franck Attal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter