France’s Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti appeared before three of France’s most senior judges on Monday 8 March. The judges form the investigating panel for the Court of Justice of the Republic, the special court set up to hear cases against ministers or the president when they are accused of breaking the law while in office.
Dupond-Moretti, one of the most flamboyant and controversial figures at the bar in France, was brought before the court by Anticor, an association that has pursued corruption in public life in France since it was founded in 2002.
A career defence lawyer, Dupond-Moretti was plucked out of daily legal practice to become justice minister, in a surprise appointment by President Emmanuel Macron in July 2020. A month before, it had been revealed that his phone had been tapped by the investigators of the National Financial Prosecutor (PNF) as part of its corruption investigation into former president Nicolas Sarkozy. Describing the investigators’ methods as those of “thugs”, he brought a formal legal complaint against the PNF, a complaint he later dropped when he was appointed minister. However, his ministerial predecessor, Nicole Belloubet, had already required the judicial inspectorate to look into the phone tapping.
