On Friday 6 September, the Nanterre Criminal Court handed down a suspended six-month prison sentence to former minister Michèle Alliot-Marie for illegally taking on interests

The facts of the case date back to the period between 2010 and 2012, when she was deputy mayor of Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region. The lawyers of the woman who successively held the portfolios of Defence, Home Affairs, Justice and Foreign Affairs under the presidencies of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, immediately announced that they would be filing an appeal.

This conviction follows an indictment issued in February 2019 as part of an investigation into suspicious financial flows in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The case, which began in 2013, related in part to movements of funds in local associations, in connection with a festival run by Michèle Alliot-Marie’s late father.

In July, the public prosecutor requested a two-year suspended prison sentence, a €50,000 fine and three years’ ineligibility. The former minister’s defence considered these demands to be ‘disproportionate’.