This privilege capped off Benalla’s already comfortable compensation: Le Parisien reported that Benalla was earning a cozy, nearly ministerial €10,000-a-month salary, which was not suspended during his forced hiatus.īenalla’s return to grace was all the more jarring considering the president’s inner circle had very concrete reasons to worry about the story. As late as Jless than two months after the end of his suspension and just days before the scandal came to engulf the presidency - Benalla was granted an apartment by the Seine in Paris’s posh Seventh Arrondissement. Were it not for the work of investigative journalists and the ensuing public outrage, Benalla’s excesses would have hardly affected his particularly close relationship with President Macron. By the end of the month, Benalla had resumed full duties and recovered his former privileges. Instead of alerting public prosecutors to the existence of this gross violation of power, the president’s staff handed the bodyguard a lenient fifteen-day suspension. Between May Day 2018 and July 18 that same year - the date that the scandal first broke, following an extended investigation by Le Monde - Benalla’s overzealousness was dealt with entirely in-house, with the severity of his offenses treated at a discount rate.Īlready on May 4, the Élysée Palace had caught wind of Benalla’s activities three days earlier. In fact, Benalla and Crase’s actions could very well have gone undisclosed to the public. These deeper problems were not on trial - and yet they continue to fester. But we shouldn’t forget the breadth of what was a full-fledged state scandal, offering a rare glimpse into the culture among Macron’s inner circle. The November 5 decision thus brings to a close this chapter of Benalla’s legal troubles. As Creusat’s attorney pleaded, this was a clumsy and misguided attempt to protect the “institution” of the presidency. The former police captain and police comptroller were accused of supplying Benalla with flattering CCTV footage of the May Day events as the press was about to break the story in July 2018. Benalla’s right-hand man at the May Day events, Crase faces a two-year suspended jail sentence, a €500 fine, and a ten-year ban on owning a firearm.įellow defendants Maxence Creusat and Laurent Simonin, both policemen, were sentenced to a €5,000 fine and a three-month suspended prison sentence, respectively. A reservist former gendarme and an old friend of Benalla’s, Vincent Crase was a security attaché for Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) party. The judges reserved similar treatment for Benalla’s accomplices and codefendants, including the police officials who colluded with him in the early stages of the case. ![]() They deemed that Benalla had already been sufficiently “ judged by the court of public opinion,” since he had been “branded by the red iron of social networks and hyper-mediatization.” By going beyond the prosecutors’ original demands, the judges have rejected this strange, backhanded indictment of investigative journalists and legitimate citizen concern over the conduct of the powerful. Prosecutors originally requested an eighteen-month suspended prison sentence, along with the other conditions related to firearms and public service. ![]() Benalla’s multiple offences include deliberate violence committed in a group, unauthorized execution of a public function, holding an unlicensed handgun, and possession and use of an unauthorized diplomatic passport. “I don’t always do things according to the rules, as shown by where I am today.” This mea culpa was confirmed by public prosecutors as they made their sentencing arguments late in September - requesting a far lighter sentence than the one the Paris courts ultimately handed down on Friday. ![]() “I’m no angel,” the hulky thirty-year-old admitted at the bar in his final defense plea on October 1. ![]() Handed a €500 fine and banned from carrying or owning a firearm for ten years, Benalla also faces a five-year ban from public service, though the sentence remains subject to a possible appeal. Rather, one year is to be sat out at his mother’s home outside Paris and the other two on parole. In the ruling handed down on Friday afternoon, Benalla was sentenced to a three-year prison sentence - though he is not set to do actual jail time. This Friday marked the conclusion of the trial of the president’s former personal bodyguard Alexandre Benalla, convicted (among other things) of donning police clothing to violently beat up peaceful protesters and bystanders at Paris’s 2018 May Day rallies. It was one of the biggest scandals of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency - and three years later it’s ending in a whimper.
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