French police have spent 15 hours searching the ministry of justice as part of a conflict of interest investigation against justice minister Eric Dupond-Moretti.
20 gendarmes along with magistrates from the Law Court of the Republic (CJR) - the only French authority with the power to try ministers for alleged abuses carried out while in office – carried out the search on Thursday in the presence of the justice minister.
The search, a very rare event in France, ended at midnight.
Dupond-Moretti’s lawyer, Christophe Ingrain, told the press on Thursday evening that the operation was taking a long time because investigators insisted on opening old safe-deposit boxes in the justice minister’s office. No one had the keys.
“Drills and grinders had to be used… to discover they contained nothing,” said the minister’s adviser who also complained about the “disproportionate use of force”.
Eric Dupond-Moretti was named justice minister last summer with a brief to reform the justice system.
The former celebrity lawyer was already a household name and his appointment was seen as inappropriate by some magistrates and prosecutors.
His drive to introduce filmed court proceedings and re-write the judges’ training book has further angered many in the legal profession.
Conflict of interests
In January the CJR opened a probe against the justice minister into conflicts of interest owing to his previous job as a top defence lawyer.
The inquiry was opened following complaints filed by three magistrate unions and the Anticor anti-corruption group.
The French weekly Canard Enchainé reported this week that Dupond-Moretti will himself soon be summoned by CJR magistrates to be questioned.
In an unusual move, Prime Minister Jean Castex was himself questioned by the CJR as a witness in the case on 7 June.
The accusations relate to an administrative investigation ordered by Dupond-Moretti in September against three magistrates of the powerful National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF).
They took part in an enquiry aimed at identifying the mole who allegedly informed former president Nicolas Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog that they were being wiretapped in a corruption case.
Both have since been sentenced in that case to one year in jail, though it is unlikely they will serve any time behind bars.
Controversial figure
As a defence lawyer, Dupond-Moretti – an intimidating figure who has likened the courtroom to a theatre – earned the nickname of the “Acquittor”, a reference to the Terminator films, for his track record in getting clients acquitted.
Dupond-Moretti swore as recently as 2018 that he would never be justice minister, saying no one would have the “utterly absurd” idea – “and frankly I would never accept such a thing”.
In 2019, he even starred in his own one-man theatre show called “Eric Dupond-Moretti to the Bar”.
When he was named justice minister in a summer 2020 reshuffle, the head of the USM magistrates union, Celine Parisot, said that appointing a person “who is so divisive and who has such scorn for the judiciary” was tantamount to “a declaration of war”.
