The question roiled the corridors of ministerial offices over the summer. Can private sector advisers, hired as subcontractors, be condemned to a revolving door if they then join companies they have controlled or on which they have formulated opinions in the course of their duties, in the same way as their colleagues?
This unprecedented debate, which took place in mid-June at the Paris criminal court, around the case of Pierre-Yves Burlot, former member of the cabinet of the Secretary of State for the ecological and inclusive transition, Brune Poirson (2017-2020), accused of having joined an industrial group with which he had had close relations when he was an advisor, found its epilogue on Wednesday 4 September, as a new ministerial waltz looms.
The court opted for the middle way, releasing the consultant, who was prosecuted for a revolving door, although it specified in its ruling that the rules applied in the same terms to subcontracted workers and civil servants. “It is clear from Mr. Burlot’s employment contract that (…) a contractual agent of the State, therefore a public agent, The president of the 32 estimated in his opinionmy room, Bénédicte de Perthuis. [Il était] In this context, he was subject to the rules relating to ethical control in the public service – which he was not unaware of since he submitted to these rules” declaring to his superiors his desire to join the Séché Environnement group, a company specialising in the storage, treatment and recycling of waste, a few months after having worked as a technical advisor in green finance and the circular economy.
Ethical risks
The argument of his lawyer, M.my Rémi Lorrain, in relation to the lack of explicit mention of subcontracted workers in article 432-13 of the penal code which defines the “illegal appropriation of interests”, also known as the “revolving door crime”, will not have convinced the judges to exclude subcontracted workers from the scope of this crime. “The court (…) considered that the notion of a contractual public agent is included in that of an agent of the public administration”said the president.
Following Mr Burlot’s arrival at the Séché group in early 2021, the National Tax Prosecutor’s Office opened a preliminary investigation, questioning what the thirty-something had declared to the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP). in order to accept his hiring at Séché. Since August 2019, the law stipulates that this authority must be contacted for any project to reconvert ministerial collaborators to the private sector within three years of their departure, so that it can rule on the ethical and criminal risks.
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