Paris, France | AFP | Friday 10/05/2024 – Former investigating judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, known for having notably investigated high-profile political-financial cases such as Elf, Urba and Cahuzac, has died at the age of 71.
“Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke has left us. France loses a great magistrate and Justice an immense servant. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family and loved ones,” announced the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti on Friday. , on X.
Retired since 2019, Mr. Van Ruymbeke, with a slender silhouette, wearing a mustache and thin glasses, was one of the emblematic judges in the fight against corruption in France and has investigated some of the most sensitive political and financial cases in recent years. decades.
Among his instructions are notably the Urba affair, on the secret financing of the Socialist Party, investigations into Jérôme Cahuzac and the Balkany couple, or even the complex affair of the Taiwan frigates. In 2008, he also led the investigation into the giant frauds of Société Générale trader Jérôme Kerviel.
For years, Mr. Van Ruymbeke, born August 19, 1952 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, also tracked alleged flows of hidden financing by Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007.
His path crossed that of the former president on several occasions, from the Clearstream affair, which had threatened the judge with a disciplinary sanction, to that of Karachi on the financing of Edouard Balladur’s campaign in 1995, of which Sarkozy was the spokesperson.
“Servant of Justice”
The announcement of his death, the cause of which was not specified, aroused emotion in the legal world.
Mr. Van Ruymbeke “embodied the image of the independent and courageous investigating judge, and will leave an indelible mark in the judicial history of our country”, reacted Rémy Heitz, attorney general at the Court of Cassation.
“All the lawyers who have ever entered his study office know the intelligence, the humanity, the elegance that emanated from him,” praised the Association of Criminal Lawyers.
In his own way, businessman Xavier Niel paid tribute to the one who “put him in prison” for concealment of abuse of social assets. “Bite the yellow line, bite it well, but don’t go beyond it. That’s the best advice I’ve received. The man who put me in prison and gave it to me is dead.” , he confided on X.
Former anti-corruption judge and co-founder of the Anticor association Eric Halphen highlighted his “unfailing sense of humor” for a “free, tenacious, courageous judge”.
A magistrate “who will have deeply marked the judicial institution, and embodied its values with independence and courage”, praised the Paris Court of Appeal.
A great slayer of tax evasion and tax havens, the former judge noted that “there is a lot of money at our doors and no one is doing anything”, during the last interview given to AFP, in November 2022.
The magistrate, a great football fan and also a distinguished pianist, called for “the need for awareness”, “at a time when States have significant deficits, great needs for hospitals, for the energy transition”.
Bluntly, he urged states to recover lost revenues resulting from “tax evasion, drug trafficking and corruption.”
In his latest book “Offshore. Behind the edifying scenes of tax havens” (Ed. Les Liens qui Libération), Mr. Van Ruymbeke denounced the lack of “political will to eradicate the system”, to track down “the opaque circuits of havens”. tax.”
In 1996, the magistrate participated in the crusade against dirty money laundering launched by the “Geneva Call”.
“Justice loses a great magistrate, courageous and determined,” laments former Paris prosecutor François Molins, expressing “the hope that his numerous calls, since the Geneva forum in 1996, to combat financial crime and money laundering will be better heard by our political leaders and further acted upon.
The Magistrates’ Union highlighted Mr. Van Ruymbeke’s commitments “in favor of a more egalitarian and more independent financial justice. The fight against white-collar delinquency must continue more than ever.”