Translation of the news release by the French news
agency, Agence France Presse, dated April 29th 2014, following the
press release issued to Agence France Presse by M. Fabien Chalandon on the
Visionex case.
Visionex : before his trial, the son of a former member
of the French government,
launches his counter-attack
Sent to trial in the Visionex case,
Fabien Chalandon, son of the former minister of Justice, Albin Chalandon,
counterattacks by lodging a penal complaint, which Agence France Presse has accessed to, and in which he
presents this case as a conspiracy engineered by the French gaming police.
The Visionex case bears the name of a start-up company
from western France (Loire-Atlantique), which had sold to French bars a device which
provided user-friendly internet access for a fee. Investigators consider that
this equipment is hiding a slot machine, which is prohibited by French laws.
This is the conclusion drawn by an investigative
magistrate after four years of enquiry, which led in January eight people to be
sent to trial, including Fabien Chalandon. The date of the trial is unknown.
Fabien Chalandon, 61 years old, worked for Visionex as
a consultant. He has assured AFP that the Visionex equipment was providing a promotional
lottery legal under the French Consumer code, and that the Department of Public
Liberties of the Ministry of Interior had verbally granted its consent to this lottery
in November 2007.
But simultaneously, a penal enquiry was initiated in a
Paris suburb, Créteil. This is the context claimed by Fabien Chalandon, which urged
his father to appeal to Mrs. Alliot-Marie, then minister of Interior, on the
grounds that such a penal proceeding could destroy this start-up company.
Minister of Justice between 1986 and 1988, Albin
Chalandon was remanded in custody for 48 hours and interrogated in 2010 for,
among other subjects, his lobbying for Visionex with the French authorities. A
former senior cabinet advisor to Mrs. Alliot-Marie, David Senat, was also indicted
but charges against him were dropped in January
2014.
Fabien Chalandon, who claims to have helped Visionex
at the request of his father, is accusing the French Gaming Police (Service central des courses et jeux -SCCJ), of having
conspired to destroy Visionex. According to him, the Visionex devices were threatening
the economic interests of PMU and Française des Jeux, the two French gaming
monopolies. He presents the French enquiry has an “organized and premeditated plan”
or a “chantier” (the French jargon to designate a police set-up using
fabricated evidence), to punish him for having denounced the Gaming Police and their
highly questionable methods.
In January 2014, Mr. Fabien Chalandon lodged a criminal
complaint seeking redress and damages for, among other legal reasons, “forgery,
falsification, spicing-up, concealment and destruction of evidence”, “abuse of
power”, “false testimony”, “perversion of the course of justice by the use of fraudulent
means”, in which he questions the impartiality of the investigation which led
him to be remanded 10 days in custody on fabricated charges.
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