Former Secretary of State Thierry Mandon (PS) was sentenced, on Friday, November 15, to one year of suspended prison and a fine of 22,000 euros for fraud related to his former duties as director general of the Cité du design de Saint-Etienne ( Loire).
Thierry Mandon, 66, was found guilty by the Saint-Étienne criminal court of“scams”, “attempted misappropriation of public property by a person holding public authority”, “forgery and use of forgery in writing” AND “abuse of corporate assets”.
In addition to prison sentences and fines, the former director of the Cité du design de Saint-Etienne, from 2018 to 2022, is sentenced to five years of disqualification and a permanent ban from presiding over or directing a public establishment, announced the president of the court, specifying that “the whole matter is immediately executable”.
Therefore, he will have to resign from his position as secretary general of the National Council of Commerce, which he has held since June 2023, acknowledged his lawyer, André Buffard. The decision to appeal “is under consideration”he added.
fake invoices
Thierry Mandon was accused of several financial crimes, between 2019 and 2021, for a total damage of 22,000 euros, when he was both general director of the Cité du design de Saint-Etienne and president of its commercial subsidiary, SAS City Services.
He admitted to submitting false invoices to finance, for almost €15,000, a custom staircase in his Parisian home and for Cité Services to reimburse 43 Paris-Saint-Etienne TGV trips previously paid for by Cité’s design, as well as a trip to China that It was ultimately not carried out due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
denouncing “the meander of Mr. Mandon’s grandiose explanations”the representative of the prosecution had stigmatized “the misappropriation of public funds, even if it is pathetic in terms of its amount, by a personality who has had a notable political career”but one “End of the road as a petty criminal, abuser of society and embezzler of public funds”.
The defense pleaded guilty, stressing that all embezzled sums had been reimbursed by their client before the report prepared in November 2022 by the president of the Cité du design, Marc Chassaubéné, also deputy for culture of Saint-Etienne.
