Corruption trial opens over auto giant’s payments to former French justice minister

Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: User:Sengkang · Copyrighted free use · via Wikimedia Commons

Rachida Dati, France's former justice minister and current Paris district mayor, went on trial Wednesday over a roughly $1 million consulting contract she signed with then-Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn in 2009, while she served in the European Parliament. Prosecutors allege the money, paid out between 2010 and 2012, bought influence rather than any actual legal or consulting work, and no paper trail documents what she produced. Ghosn, a fugitive in Lebanon since fleeing Japanese custody in 2019 inside a music equipment box, did not appear and claims he never received the summons.

The trial nearly stalled over Ghosn's absence before the judge decided to proceed on the existing case file. Dati's lawyer insisted she wants to be judged so she can be acquitted; a lawyer for anti-corruption group Anticor countered that delay favors the corrupt. If convicted, Dati faces up to 10 years in prison, a roughly $500,000 fine, and a five-year ban from public office; Ghosn faces up to 10 years and a $430,000 fine.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A million dollars changed hands and nobody involved can point to a single report or study that came out of it. That's not a paperwork oversight, that's the whole business model. The man who could explain his side is sitting in Lebanon, having once escaped a country by hiding in a box, so don't expect this one to wrap up tidy.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Hot Swing · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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