" A drift ". Figurehead of the financial justice, the ex-investigating judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke criticism without chewing his words, the parallel investigation of the Parquet national financier (PNF), which was designed to identify the "mole" supposed to have informed Nicolas Sarkozy and his council, Me Thierry Herzog, the placement on the viewing of their line, opened in the name (of borrowing), of Bismuth.
As revealed to The Point, the fadettes (telephone records) of many lawyers, but also judges, have been picked in the greatest of secrecy so that a judicial inquiry was opened for "influence peddling" and " violation of professional secrecy ". "The very fact of review of the fadettes of counsel in a matter which did not concern them is unjustified. I understand that the law society protests ", says the former magistrate – now retired – in an interview granted to our colleagues in Dalloz Actualité. "He never would help me come up with the idea to make me communicate fadettes of lawyers. This is not my conception of the work of the judge, " he continued. This type of investigation, very intrusive, " the door unquestionably infringement of professional secrecy, as it allows you to know all the contacts of the lawyer, whether or not they are customers. This is a reserved field. This protects the lawyer, of course, but it also protects the client. It is a fundamental right. The only limit is the commission of an offence by the lawyer ", says Renaud Van Ruymbeke.
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The famous judge is not tender with the methods of the former boss of the PNF, Éliane Houlette, including its propensity to leave most of the investigations opened into " preliminary ", so as to keep them in hands it, rather than entrust it to a magistrate – " independent, contrary to the prosecutor's office ". So far, it is not calling for the removal of the PNF, "because it allows you to specialize the judges in a very complex" to deal with " the financial arrangements really sophisticated, which justify [a] specialization ". "It is not so much the existence of the PNF that [his] status ", which, according to him, poses a problem.
"Pressures" on the PNF
The "pressures" referred to by Éliane Houlette in the case Fillon confirmed that the judicial hierarchy of the state prosecutor – which itself is under the direct authority of the policy – occurs frequently in individual folders. "A prosecutor may not receive individual instructions written [...], but it may receive a phone call or pressures which are "friendly" and mindful of his career, engaged in self-censorship, "said the one who can boast of having been the bête noire of the left in power and be labelled a "red judge" by the right. He has often found the floor on his way to the sensitive information he had ; many of his records have been "saucissonnés" to obstruct his investigation.
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In his interview to Dalloz, Renaud Van Ruymbeke calls for a major reform of the constitution in the judiciary. It shakes up the passage the idea according to which the status of judges [they] would offer all guarantees of independence. "Their careers [...], their appointments and advancement report to the director of judicial services, so the ministry of Justice and, therefore, political power ", he recalls. "The CSM [supreme Council of the judiciary, ED.] must be for the magistrates of the seat and the floor the only decision-making body ; but we cannot be satisfied with his assent, as he escapes, upstream, to the initiative of the choice of the candidate, who does not belong, for the time being, as at the chancellery. To go further, you should attach the Directorate of judicial services and the general Inspection of justice [...]. It is only at the end of such a substantive reform that the judicial authority will give place to a judiciary ", argues Van Ruymbeke. The CMO must be " thoroughly renewed in its composition ", he adds. "Take heed corporatism ; when the judiciary asserts its independence, it cannot function self-sufficiently, in the between-oneself ", he believes, by claiming " a better representation of the civil society ".
Without a doubt, this reform is not for tomorrow. Renaud Van Ruymbeke, who taught them many business booming (Casc, the frigates of Taiwan, Cahuzac, Clearstream, spouses Balkany....), address, a dig at the political class, describing them as Tartuffe those who denounce today the pressures on the prosecutors..., the same who, " when they were in power, has not resulted in the independence of the prosecutor's office ".
