In June 2023, the Paris prosecutor’s office received a complaint on suspicion of forgery, accusing in particular the Ministry of Economy of having lied about the existence of documents related to the renewal of motorway concessions in 2015, the prosecutor’s office reported on Thursday. confirming Marianne’s information. According to the weekly, an investigation is underway that the Paris prosecutor’s office did not confirm to AFP.
“A complaint for falsification, addressed first to the national finance prosecutor’s office, was the subject of a transfer in June 2023 to the Paris prosecutor’s office,” the prosecutor’s office said.
Bercy assures that the requested documents do not exist
In April 2023, Raymond Avrillier, former deputy mayor of Grenoble and environmental activist, sent a report to the courts, revealed by Marianne. Raymond Avrillier had obtained communication, in 2019, of the memorandum of agreement of almost 3.3 billion euros signed in 2015 between the highway concessionaires and the State, in particular the Ministries of Economy and Environment, with Emmanuel Macron at the head, for a side. and Ségolène Royal, on the other. Since then, he has continued to request preparatory documents for this highway recovery program.
After the lack of response from the ministries despite the favorable opinion of the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents (CADA), it appealed to the Paris administrative court in 2019 to annul this implicit refusal, according to procedural elements of which it was aware. AFP. In this context, the services of the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, stated before the administrative court that the documents requested by Raymond Avrillier did not exist, which he denies.
“After the investigation, the services of the Ministry of Economy (…) are not in possession of any documents listed by the applicant. Therefore, they cannot present them,” he wrote and signed, in a letter dated March 16, 2022 addressed to the court, the then deputy director of legal affairs of the Ministry of Economy. In another letter dated December 13, 2021 addressed to Raymond Avrillier, the secretary general of the government, Claire Landais, writes: “after multiple searches, no report held by the State services between 2013 and 2015 and that has been used in the preparation of modifications to the highways The concession contracts have not been identified.
“Unfounded and slanderous” accusations
However, he sent him “the joint report of the General Inspection of Finance and the General Council of Environment and Sustainable Development presented to the Government in 2013 within the framework of the highway recovery plan.” In their conclusions addressed to the court in 2021, the services of the Ministry of Ecological Transition also justify their refusal to transmit a 2015 State Council ruling on the subject.
Interrogated by AFP, Bercy declared that “the accusations spread by the newspaper Marianne are unfounded and slanderous”, that “the State services have adopted positions founded on law to respond to requests for the communication of documents” and that “in no case These positions constitute a falsification.”
In his report, Raymond Avrillier maintains that “the officials in question are perfectly aware of the alteration of the truth because they know very well that the ministers have documents and reports to develop the memorandum of understanding of April 9, 2015.” He assures that there are at least three preparation notes, on the analysis of the date of the concessionaire companies and on the profitability of the operations of the concessionaires in particular, “the content of which is unknown because it has not been communicated.”
Source: BFM TV
