It is 11am on May 17th 2021 and a judge is sitting in a charmless office in a Ministry of Justice annex building sandwiched between the Paris ring road and Aubervilliers in the north of the capital. In his hotel room the day before he had gone over dozens of notes strewn on his bed about what he was going to say, how he was going to say it and why.
What awaited him was certainly no easy ride, but rather an endurance test that had the feel of a trial. In France's Ministry of Justice this process is what is known as an “inspection”. Dozens of them take place every year but this one, chosen by the recently-appointed minister of justice Éric Dupond-Moretti himself, was an unusual one. Today it forms one of the ingredients of a political scandal that has already seen the minister placed under formal investigation over an illegal “conflict of interests”. It was the first time this has happened to a French justice minister.
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For five days in a row and for nine hours at a time this judge - Édouard Levrault – had to respond to more than 400 questions from three inspectors in a large meeting room. He was suspected of having breached the confidentiality of judicial investigations and, in public comments, of having broken the confidentiality, duty of care and sensitivity that a judge is obliged to show. But the story that Levrault went on to tell, and which is contained in series of minuted evidence reports that Mediapart has seen, is less about his own alleged failings and more about the rather larger shortcomings of others.
This story describes the destruction that money and abuse of power has caused in the principality of Monaco, where the judge worked for three years. It tells of a seconded French judge's lost illusions, a judge who had succeeded in lifting a part of the veil covering corruption in a small state that has been consumed by the insatiable appetite of a Russian oligarch, of the hopes of several brave individuals in the face of institutional cowardice and, in the end, of the excesses of one man, a popular lawyer who became a minister of the French Republic.
I. Destination Monaco
After leaving France's training school for judges and prosecutors, the École Nationale de la Magistrature (ENM), Édouard Levrault became an examining magistrate or judge at Laon in the north of France, where he worked from 2005 to 2013, and then worked as deputy prosecutor at Grasse in the south-east of the country from 2013 to 2016. It was in 2016 that he obtained the posting that he really wanted, and which he had failed to get in an initial application in 2011 – working in Monaco.
The tiny sovereign state of Monaco – it occupies two square kilometres (0.75 sq miles) surrounded by France on three sides and the Mediterranean Sea on the other – is a monarchy that has been ruled by the Grimaldi family for seven centuries, and where Catholicism is the state religion. This city-nation, which is often called 'Le Rocher' ('The Rock'), has its own legal system but it has one peculiarity; around 15 French judges and prosecutors work there on permanent secondment to help their colleagues in Monaco, working under the joint authority of the French and Principality legal hierarchies. The courts in Monaco deliver justice in the name of the prince and not the people.
Édouard Levrault was due to fill one of the two posts of examining or investigative judge in the small country. But before he could take over, local protocol meant that he first had to have a meeting with Monaco's director of legal services – effectively its justice minister - at the time, Philippe Narmino. When he was being questioned by the inspectors in May 2021, Édouard Levrault spoke about a “very warm, friendly and attentive” initial welcome by Narmino, who had worked his way up through the ranks of the Monaco legal system before getting the top job in 2006.
Judge Levrault was even given advice that boded well as to the behaviour and ethics expected of a judge in the principality. “As to the peculiarities of the Principality, [Philippe Narmino] told me that it was a confined area with a risk of conflicts of interest and drew my attention to the fact that the position of investigating judge in Monaco was particularly exposed and that we must not compromise our image of impartiality through our lifestyle, because we were quickly identified in a country of two square kilometres,” he recalled. Monaco has only 9,573 citizens but more than 38,000 residents, many of them very wealthy.
As he himself described, Édouard Levrault found working conditions in Monaco “very pleasant” with significant resources compared with the crisis-hit French judiciary: he had a clerk, a secretary and numerous court ushers to help his work. “It was a level of resource that every French jurisdiction would like to have,” he told the inspectors.
However, a corruption case involving a police officer soon gave him a glimpse of the strangeness of local legal morals. He recalled: “[The police officers] explained to me that I was in Monaco and that I clearly had not properly understood how things worked there, and that the telephone taps in operation could implicate senior figures or dignitaries in Monaco.”
The meaning was clear: the reason the police did not want to proceed with the phone taps was to protect local public figures. The judge, who had only just arrived, said that he gave way - on this occasion. Quite quickly he also became worried about the actions of a fellow investigating judge and the “rather porous nature” of that judge's relations with local lawyers and police officers. He said the judge was involved in “damaging meddling” in some cases.
II. The man who wanted to buy a state
Judge Levrault's involvement in a case that was to become the biggest of his career – and prove to be his downfall – came by an unexpected route. A year after he had arrived in Monaco the judge had been looking into the proceedings of a seemingly routine case of a breach of privacy when he laid his hands on a report analysing the contents of a mobile phone which – he would later discover - contained some of the most sensitive secrets in the principality.
The telephone in question belonged to Tetiana Bersheda, the lawyer and confidante of Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who dreamed of controlling Monaco. Rybolovlev had started out on the 'Rock' in 2011 by pumping hundreds of millions of euros into the local football club, to which the principality's sovereign Prince Albert and his entourage were greatly attached. His aim was in effect to buy a country that was far removed from any political or legal problems.
In this principality, where everyone knows each other, it did not take long for courtiers to gather around the Russian oligarch, a man reputed to be dull and ill-tempered, but who knows how to be generous when circumstances demand. His wealth is estimated at 6.8 billion dollars. Some police officers, judges, elected officials and civil servants accepted his gifts – a box of caviar here, a vintage wine there – and invitations to his box at the Louis II stadium where AS Monaco play in the top flight of French football..
When he analysed Tetiana Bersheda's phone messages Édouard Levrault discovered what an investigating judge should simply not know in Monaco. Among other things he saw that senior police officers, who had diligently dealt with a legal complaint made by Rybolovlev in 2015 against his former art dealer Yves Bouvier – the case has since been dropped – were secretly being guided by the oligarch's lawyer.
So in July 2017 an investigation was opened over suspicions of “corruption”, “influence peddling” and “breaching the confidentiality of an investigation”. It was the start of the Rybolovlev affair and it made headlines in the press. Édouard Levrault, the former small-time judge from Laon, now found himself thrust into the limelight.
And this was just the start. As his investigations continued the judge unearthed the system of clientelism that the Russian oligarch had methodically constructed to get high-ranking figures on his side, getting ever closer to the prince's palace as he did so. “Just how far will this judge go?” was the question on everyone's lips in the principality's restaurants.
It's true that we're not used to investigations that cast their net so wide.
Levrault's detractors started looking into the judge's private life and one far-right publication even went as far as to publish an article about his new partner's past. Armies of lawyers did all they could to get the proceedings stopped and prevent the use of Bersheda's text messages, though all the attempts failed. Around a hundred police officers in civilian clothes demonstrated against the judge. Meanwhile the monarch, Prince Albert II, tried to calm things down. “It's true that we're not used to investigations that cast their net so wide, but I think that [Édouard Levrault] should be left to get on with it,” the prince told Mediapart at the time.
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On September 14th 2017 Monaco justice minister Philippe Narmino, who had himself become caught up in the net of judicial suspicion, was forced to quit. The news broke like a bombshell in the hushed corridors of Monaco's judiciary. Édouard Levrault, who had been so warmly welcomed to the principality by the justice minister just a year earlier, was now investigating the latter's own connections with Rybolovlev.
It turned out that in 2015 Philippe Narmino and his wife had been invited as guests to a fabulous chalet owned by the Russian in Gstaad in Switzerland. Their son, who is a legal advisor in Monaco, had also worked with companies in the British Virgin Islands linked to the oligarch, the judge had discovered.
On September 22nd 2017 the judge ordered the departing minister's office to be searched and for him to be held in custody, which forced Narmino to cancel his leaving drinks with judicial colleagues which had been scheduled for 7.30pm that evening. When he spoke to the inspectors Édouard Levrault said there had been a “non-theoretical risk” that evidence might be lost. He said: “My duty was to ensure the truth came out and not maintain politeness over the holding of his leaving drinks.”
The judge also spoke about resistance from some police officers designated to investigative the case, including the actions of some of their colleagues. He spoke of delays and obstacles and of his surprise when reading reports of the search of Philppe Narmino's home, which was carried out in the latter's absence at the same time as his office was searched. “I noticed that some of Mr Narmino's professional documents had been photographed at his home and their existence noted but not seized. Yet that was one of the concrete elements that we were looking for. I also noted that a bank card and a document had not been seized from a safe and did not feature in the reports even though they also appeared in the photo,” he told the inspectors last year.
The judge also spoke about a former police chief who was “manipulated” by some of his detectives who hid information from him that the political authorities knew about. “It didn't instil a great climate of trust,” he noted. Levrault spoke, too, about the relationship between detectives and Tetiana Bersheda, who was told in advance that she was going to be taken into custody and who was able to use her phone during questioning. “I had no choice but to work very cautiously with this police department,” he said.
Through the searches the judge also got to meet Laurent Anselmi, the deputy for legal affairs in the Monaco government who went on to replace Narmino as justice minister and who would be responsible for Levrault's own removal in 2019. “So the circumstances of the initial contact were not the best,” the judge told the inspectors with some understatement. Matters were not improved when in June 2018 the judge summoned Laurent Anselmi to question him over two lunch invitations that he had accepted from Tetiana Bersheda in September 2014 and January 2015. However, the search of Narmino's home had allowed the judge to discover some information about conversations with the prosecution department concerning his investigation, and of which he had been unaware. “You can't post me into this institutional situation and then come and criticise me for having difficult relations with some members of the prosecution,” he told the inspectors last year.
In November 2018, a year after he began his investigation, Édouard Levrault charged Dimitri Rybolovlev, Tetiana Bersheda, Philippe Narmino and his wife and son, plus the former minister of the interior in Monaco Paul Masseron and three police officers: Régis Asso, former head of the Monaco police, head of detectives Christophe Haget and his deputy Frédéric Fusari.
The judge continued his investigation but he was dancing on the edge of a volcano.
III. 'France has abandoned me'
On June 24th, 2019, six months after the series of charges that shook the Rock, Judge Levrault was himself called into the office of the new justice minister. He later described the scene to the inspectors: “At the start of the afternoon Mr Anselmi asked me to come up to his office. As I went in I saw his secretary general enter with me. I realised that something official was going to be announced to me. He explained to me in a terse manner that the Monaco authorities were foregoing a request to renew my secondment and that it was down to me to make contact with the administration where I came from to organise my return.” In Monaco this decision was at the discretion of the authorities and could not be appealed, the minister told him.
“I was stunned, in shock. I informed my clerk and secretary who started to cry, in total disbelief,” the judge recalled. He said that before he could call the French authorities to find out his next career move he realised he did not know the date of his departure. So he asked if he could briefly see the minister again. The latter, who was “almost amused”, told him that this would be September 1st, in under two months.
I was stunned, in shock.
The brutal ousting of a judge who was causing a nuisance inevitably attracted press coverage. The judge, about whom the political and business powers in Monaco spread venomous rumours, decided to speak out publicly, first to French weekly news magazine L'Obs and then to public broadcaster France 3. “My aim was to attack the damage to the independence of the justice system through the circumstances of my ousting … For me the duty to be discreet is not enough in itself to prevent all communication by a judge, in particular one placed in my situation,” he explained to the inspectors.
The judge found himself in a situation in which, though he had been appointed to fight attacks on public probity in Monaco, in reality he was surrounded by a cabal of people who were likely to be compromised by his investigation. But he thought he could at least count on the most important thing: France and its republican values.
However, that reasoning did not take into account the arrival of Éric Dupond-Moretti as the new minister in charge of the Ministry of Justice. Not long before his July 2020 appointment Dupond-Moretti, a prominent lawyer, had defended one of those charged in the Rybolovlev case, the police officer Christophe Haget, and had made a personal attack on Judge Levrault. Speaking to Nice Matin newspaper, the lawyer attacked the judge's supposed “cowboy” methods and even threatened legal action against him.
Speaking to the inspectors, Édouard Levrault referred to the lawyer's comments as “excessive and violent … completely inappropriate, outrageous and a caricature” and which contained “many inaccuracies”. But for the judge, worst was to come. Soon after Éric Dupond-Moretti became minister of justice he began a disciplinary inquiry against Judge Levrault, as Mediapart revealed at the time. This clear conflict of interests is today one of the reasons why Éric Dupond-Moretti has been placed under formal investigation by judges at the Cour de la Justice de la République (CJR), the French court that prosecutes alleged wrongdoing by ministers in the course of their official duties.
In the Monaco case, as in the case in which prosecutors from the financial crimes prosecution unit the Parquet National Financier (PNF) were allegedly targeted by the minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti is essentially suspected of having used the disciplinary means at his disposal as a minister to settle professional and personal scores with prosecutors and judges he despised as a lawyer.
In October 2020, knowing that he was already in the inspectors' sights, Judge Levrault wrote a letter in which he expressed his incomprehension at a situation in which a minister could be both a judge and a party in the same proceedings. “Mr Dupond-Moretti got involved as the adviser of one of those charged.... This particularly unhealthy situation clearly illustrates the rogue use that [the minister of justice] intends to make of his state prerogatives, by aiming to exercise them notwithstanding the patent conflict of interest in which he has deliberately placed himself.”
The letter continued: “I find it difficult to accept claims now that, after France abandoned me to repression from Monaco, I face proceedings on the initiative of a former lawyer involved in the case concerned, even more so at the request of his client. This situation makes me very worried about the independence and impartiality that I will be granted in your investigations.”
Mediapart can today reveal a new link involving Éric Dupond-Moretti, one that is likely to shed more light still on the minister's attitude towards the judge.
In 2016 Éric Dupond-Moretti, then a private lawyer, represented the interests of a company based in the Britsh Virgin Islands, Accent Delight International Limited, that belonged to Dmitri Rybolovev. This link emerged in an investigation opened by Paris prosecutors over the alleged theft of 58 works by Picasso by the art dealer Yves Bouvier, following a complaint filed by the artist's stepdaughter Catherine Hutin-Blay.
I was a judge who cared about the idea of equality before the law, while the monarchy grants privileges.
Ultimately, the Monaco case led Judge Levrault to reflect on an issue that he raised with the inspectors: what does it mean to be a republican judge in a monarchy? “It means that I was a judge who cared about the idea of equality before the law, while the monarchy grants privileges. It might be an arbitrary act. In a monarchy there are institutional workings that have a greater impact on the court than in a Republic. Nonetheless, I didn't imagine that there might be an incompatibility between being a judge and being a Monaco judge. I wanted to do my duty, that's why I thought I had been seconded, and once I was there I realised that the monarchic workings of the institutions in Monaco assumed the existence of privileges and immunity which the justice system had to fall in line with,” explained Édouard Levrault.
The judge continued: “When a state finds itself confronted with an investigation which shakes the workings of its institutions, the way it then reacts reveals the rule of law that prevails.” Judge Levrault considers that the Rybolovlev case revealed “limits to the rule of law”. He added: “A certain conception of judicial independence must have been abandoned by France in favour of maintaining good diplomatic relations with Monaco.”
At the end of its investigation the ministry's Inspection de la Justice determined that Judge Levrault had not breached the confidentiality of investigations, as had been claimed, but that he had failed to uphold the confidentiality, duty of care and sensitivity expected of a judge by talking publicly about the pitfalls of being a judge in Monaco.
When asked for a response in relation to the issues raised by this article the Ministry of Justice told Mediapart to contact the prime minister's office, who did not comment.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter