Lawyers rail against the abolition of professional secrecy in certain cases.
Tuesday then yesterday Wednesday, lawyers from the Agen bar gathered on the steps of the Agen courthouse. As a general rule, this type of gathering often has as a red thread the challenge of a measure enacted by the Ministry of Justice and this is still the case at the end of 2021.
What is their cause for anger this time? As their chairman Patrick Lamarque explains, it was a question of protesting on the public highway against an article of the so-called law “for confidence in the judicial institution” proposed by one of their own before he became minister. , Eric Dupond-Moretti. In its article 3, this text proposes to review the conditions for maintaining the professional secrecy that exists between a lawyer and his client. Until now, professional secrecy in matters of advice fell under the scope of case law which was unfavorable to it. Professional secrecy would thus no longer be opposable to investigation or investigation measures in the event of financial offences, corruption, money laundering, tax evasion, financing of terrorism, etc.
Me Lamarque, spokesperson for the bar association, refuses like his peers “that professional secrecy, of which the Presidents of the Bar are also the guarantors, can be the subject of negotiation in a democratic society because it constitutes the one of the pillars in guaranteeing the supremacy of the rule of law over the police state (…) The degradation of public freedoms and fundamental rights which may result from this are worrying. »
More worrying according to this official, “the judicial authorities will be able, on the mere existence of an investigation in tax matters or in the field of financial crimes, to seize during searches all the documents in his file (…) and proceed with the telephone tapping of the law firm or the seizure of all its digital tools. »
