Nicolas Sarkozy’s former interior minister has been imprisoned since Monday in the Paris Health Remand Prison, pursuant to a 2017 conviction in the so-called “cabinet bonuses” case.
Claude Guéant announced on Sunday, through his lawyer, that he paid the Public Treasury all the sums he still owed following his final conviction in the so-called “cabinet bonuses” case. , which occurred in 2019. The non-clearance of this debt had earned him, last November, the revocation of his parole and imprisonment for 9 months in the remand center of Health, where he entered on December 13.
The sentence was 2 years in prison, one of which is firm, 75,000 euros in fines and damages to be paid jointly, in proportion to the sums unduly received, with the other convicts in this case – the amount of the embezzlement of public funds amounted to at 210,000 euros.
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Me Philippe Bouchez El-Ghosi intends to obtain the release of the former secretary general of the Élysée as soon as possible. “Mr. Guéant thought he still had to pay 115,000 euros, paid on December 15. However, one of his co-convicts did not pay his full share, so that there remained a balance of 18,315.95 euros..
The lawyer explains that the funds were collected from relatives of his client on the basis of loan contracts, following a “extraordinary mobilization”. “The cause of the incarceration has disappeared, it would be normal for Mr. Guéant to recover his freedom, continues Me Bouchez-El Ghosi. He is a practicing Christian who wants to spend Christmas with his family..
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“Bad Will”
During his imprisonment, he recalled that the former Minister of the Interior suffered from “serious heart problems” who have apparently not been judged by health doctors to be incompatible with the detention regime. It is now necessary that a judge of the application of sentences decides, within a maximum legal period of 4 months, so that Claude Guéant is fixed on his fate.
“It’s fine to ask to leave immediately, quipped a judicial source. He was imprisoned because the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) demonstrated that he had the greatest ill will to reimburse the sums to which he had been sentenced, claiming that he did not have the means to do more. However, he has just proved that he could very well raise the exact amount in record time.. According to the PNF, in fact, only 36% of the funds due to the Public Treasury had been paid two years after the rejection of Claude Guéant’s appeal in cassation, i.e. four years after the judgment of the Court of Appeal and this, for “a large part, in a coerced way through seizures“. This is the reason why the sentencing chamber had ordered, on November 9, the revocation of six months of parole and three months of suspended sentence, which had led to the nine-month sentence.
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Me Bouchez-El Ghozi had denounced, on December 13, the “special treatment” reserved, according to him, for his newly imprisoned client. He is now worried about a possible “ill will” of the administration which could betray the desire that it “loose in jail” while the one who was one of the highest figures in the state, during the five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy, is now in good standing with justice.
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