\n<\/p>\n
The French culture minister, Rachida Dati, is to go on trial over alleged corruption and abuse of power while she was a member of the European parliament, a judicial source has said.<\/p>\n
Dati, 59, who had hoped to run for Paris mayor in next spring\u2019s municipal elections, was charged in 2019 on suspicions she lobbied for the Renault-Nissan carmaking group while an MEP. She has denied the allegations and has repeatedly sought without success to have the charges quashed.<\/p>\n
Dati is accused of accepting \u20ac900,000 in lawyer\u2019s fees between 2010 and 2012 from a Netherlands-based subsidiary of Renault-Nissan, but of not really working for it. She was an MEP from 2009 to 2019.<\/p>\n
Investigations have tried to determine whether she was in fact lobbying in the European parliament for the carmaker, an activity that is forbidden.<\/p>\n
Dati, a former minister for the rightwing French president Nicolas Sarkozy, was appointed as culture minister last year in a surprise return to government during Emmanuel Macron\u2019s second term in office.<\/p>\n
She also serves as the mayor of Paris\u2019s <\/strong>7th arrondissement, <\/strong>where she has been a vocal critic of the city\u2019s Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo.<\/p>\n Dati became the first Muslim woman to hold a major government post in 2007 when she was appointed justice minister.<\/p>\n She has said that growing up on a low-income estate on the outskirts of the town of Chalons-sur-Sa\u00f4ne, in Burgundy, gave her a greater understanding than most politicians of the French electorate. In 2007, Sarkozy said appointing Dati sent a message \u201cto all the children of France that with merit and effort everything becomes possible\u201d.<\/p>\n When Dati was appointed to government last year she had already been charged in the Renault-Nissan case. She denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, said at the time of Dati\u2019s appointment that the legal investigation was a problem, saying it sent \u201ca bad signal\u201d and went against Macron\u2019s promises of an \u201cexemplary\u201d republic.<\/p>\n Investigating magistrates in France have also ordered that Carlos Ghosn, the former tycoon of Renault-Nissan, be tried in the case, a judicial source told Agence France-Presse. Ghosn, who has been living in Lebanon for years after escaping arrest in Japan, has also denied the charges against him.<\/p>\n A hearing on 29 September will decide on the date of the trial.<\/p>\n A source following the case told AFP that the trial could be held after the Paris municipal elections, due in March<\/p>\n Ghosn, the former chair and chief executive of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance, was arrested in Japan in November 2018 on suspicion of financial misconduct, before being sacked by Nissan\u2019s board in a unanimous decision.<\/p>\n He jumped bail late the following year and made a dramatic escape from Japan hidden in an audio-equipment box, landing in Beirut, where he remains as an international fugitive.<\/p>\n Both Japan and France have sought his arrest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The French culture minister, Rachida Dati, is to go on trial over alleged corruption and abuse of power while she was a member of the European parliament, a judicial source has said. Dati, 59, who had hoped to run for Paris mayor in next spring\u2019s municipal elections, was charged in 2019 on suspicions she lobbied<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1038,3539,956,2918,1609,5514,1354,2653],"class_list":{"0":"post-11968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-alleged","9":"tag-corruption","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-french","13":"tag-mep","14":"tag-minister","15":"tag-source"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}