Michèle Alliot-Marie, 77, a former right-wing figure and former minister, was sentenced on Friday 6 September to six months in prison for misappropriation of interests in a case dating back twelve years to the town hall of Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques).
The lawyers of the former Minister of Defence, Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs under Jacques Chirac and then Nicolas Sarkozy immediately announced that they would appeal. In this case, she was pursued for her alleged role in the payment of subsidies to an association chaired by her father, when he was deputy mayor of Saint-Jean-de-Luz. A judicial inquiry was opened in 2013.
The investigation has revealed that the Saint-Jean-de-Luz town council has paid subsidies to an association that organised the town’s Young Directors’ Festival and was headed by Bernard Marie, who died in 2015. According to the investigators, the association received more than €260,000 in its bank account between January 2010 and October 2012, in particular from the Saint-Jean-de-Luz tourist office, which is subsidised by the town council. The association also receives €25,000 each year from the town council.
Between 2009 and 2013, the date of the last edition of the Young Directors Festival, Mme Alliot-Marie was deputy mayor in addition to her duties as minister. “MAM” thus participated “personally or by proxy” to votes on the budgets, financial accounts and agreements on the objectives of the tourist office, the researchers established.
