State looters... Again and again

On September 15, 2017, in front of millions of television viewers, Emmanuel Macron, with François Bayrou, his Keeper of the Seals at the time, delivered his first lie: “It is now impossible to be elected when you have a B2 criminal record”. Nothing could be further from the truth: in 2025, it is still possible to stand for election and be elected after having been convicted by the courts, whereas there are 396 jobs requiring a clean criminal record. Ten years after the best-seller Pilleurs d'État (State Looters), which sold 120,000 copies, Philippe Pascot takes stock of the progress and setbacks in French politics, listing all the legal abuses still available to the political class: exorbitant salaries and associated expenses, tax exemptions, multiple pensions, fictitious employment, exceptional justice, show trials, bogus declarations of interest and activities, and so many other little arrangements between friends... For Philippe Pascot, the findings are indisputable: “Behind a declared desire for transparency and moralization in the political sphere, our elected representatives continue to nurture their own interests through laws that are less and less comprehensible, in order to escape criminal prosecution and drape themselves in a circumstantial innocence. ”