Former French minister Rachida Dati appeared this Wednesday before a Paris court in the case against her for corruption and influence peddling after being accused of receiving up to 900,000 euros from the company Renault-Nissan between 2010 and 2012 during her term as a Member of the European Parliament in exchange for exerting pressure within the European Parliament.
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Without making statements to the press, Dati entered the Paris court as part of the first hearing of the case and heard the summary of the charges against her, according to the French newspaper Le Parisien.
After suffering a defeat in the last municipal elections in Paris, the current mayor of the seventh district of Paris will appear from this Wednesday until September 28 before the courts. Dati faces a five-year disqualification from holding public office, a 10-year prison sentence for passive corruption, and a fine of 450,000 euros.
The prosecution alleges that Dati – formally accused in July 2021 – received a total of 900,000 euros between 2010 and 2012 from Renault-Nissan as legal consultancy when she was a Member of the European Parliament (2009-2019) through the group’s subsidiary in the Netherlands, RNBV.
Dati, who was Minister of Culture during President Emmanuel Macron’s second term and previously Minister of Justice under Nicolas Sarkozy’s leadership, allegedly received 300,000 euros annually as fees in exchange for carrying out lobbying activities before the Parliament on behalf of Renault-Nissan, thus abusing “her real or perceived influence” as a Member of the European Parliament.
Lebanese businessman and former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who is also being tried in the case, has an international arrest warrant for this since April 2023, although he is in Lebanon after fleeing Japan in 2019, where he was detained for embezzlement.
