A CC Reader files a complaint against Valérie Pécresse, candidate to the French Presidential Elections

Moved by the article of 10^th December 2021, titled HATVP, Valérie Pécresse and the Presidential elections, a reader informed the site that he had sent a complaint to the Public Prosecutor against the candidate for the presidential elections due to happen next April.

A point to keep in mind, during the regional and departmental elections last June, Contrib’City had asked the president of Ile-de-France Region^[1]The Ile-de-France is the administrative Region that includes the City of Paris, its outskirts and the rural areas around them. Its whole superficy is about 12,000 km². if she confirmed her support to the vice-president of the Yvelines département^[2]A French département is grossly the equivalent of an English county, Marie-Hélène Aubert. The team of V. Pécresse confirmed her support several times despite the fact that Mrs. Aubert has made false declarations to the HATVP and has benefitted from the real estate largesse from the deputy mayor of Jouy-en-Josas (78,350). Willing to further explore the subject, Contrib’City had investigated Madame Pécresse’s account, an ENA alumnus and a member of the National Assembly in 2013 (the year when the law for Prevention of Conflicts of Interests and for Transparency in the Public Life was passed) and realized that, since the beginning of her career nearly for 20 years, this brilliant civil servant had quite simply declared nothing to the High Authority until 2021: Niet about the statement of interests and ‘Nashi’ (Nothing in Japanese. Madame Pecresse learnt the Japanese language in her youth) about wealth declaration^[3]The patrimonial declaration is made public for the parliamentarians but remains confidential for the local elected representatives. A declaration of interests would show for example, that the politician rented via Airbnb – which she however, had publicly denounced – a beautiful villa in the Baule (a commune in the Loire-Atlantique départment), transformed into flats (also refer: cadastre). The electors could have more details with regards to the professional responsibilities of her husband, Jérôme Pécresse, a polytechnician and CEO of a subsidiary of a major US industrial group: General Electric. Finally, the French could know all the revenues and all the positions of Madame Pécresse. But nichevo, ser! (nothing at all, Sir) as the Communist Youth used to say (the young Valerie learnt Russian there). Good enough…

The fact remains that the former parliamentarian, after having simplified the question of the transparency in public life by declaring nothing to the High Authority, finally opted to submit one declaration. Strange thing, this declaration, pending publication since at least 30 September 2021, is still not published on the hatvp.fr site. However, according to the 2013 (French) Act (article 5, I), the High Authority has a maximum of three months to publish all the declarations it receives. It has been 4 months (or more?) since this administration has thus, received the document but still does not display it. Why?

Meanwhile, although the candidate preached the ‘good word’ in urban deprived areas during this presidential campaign, don’t worry too much about her: the elected representative, who lives in a private mansion in the very posh center of the City of Versailles (source: cadastre), has enough to keep her going for a bit, as commonly said. On the other hand, and this is more worrying, there’s the question whether, in fact, the French people and, more specifically, the electors who must decide about the next president of their Republic, have the right to know all the interests concerning each candidate. In the face of this problem, a Contrib’City reader has hence filed a complaint.

CC conducts the investigation and, within the limit of its very modest resources, will keep its readers informed.

Translation: Vidhi Taparia, BdF.