Nicolas Best trial: prison sentence requested against former director of Nîmes hospital at Paris criminal court

Nicolas Best. Archives Midi Libre – MiKAEL ANISSET

A three-year prison sentence, including six months in prison, as well as a ban on working in public procurement was requested this Monday, September 2 in Paris against Nicolas Best, former director of the Annecy and Nîmes hospitals.

The prosecution concluded this Monday with a harsh indictment at the Paris Criminal Court after three rather harsh days of hearings for Nicolas Best, 58, former head of CHANGE (Annecy and Saint-Julien hospitals) between 2015 and 2018 and then of the Nîmes University Hospital between 2018 and 2023.

Financial prosecutor François-Xavier Dulin has requested a three-year prison sentence, six months of which are firm (a sentence usually served under an electronic tag), as well as a fine of 10,000 euros, but suspended. The civil servant is not accused of personal enrichment. The prosecution representative also wants Nicolas Best to be banned from working at the hospital for four years, two of which are suspended, exclusively in the field of awarding public contracts. He could therefore continue to run hospitals on other levels: medical and administrative.

“The amounts matter little”

Concluding a procedure initiated in 2022 on a report from the regional audit office, the magistrate castigated the attitude of the defendant. “He does not acknowledge the facts, casts anathema on one and all, does not question himself, has not stopped lying”. However, he noted, the dinners at the restaurant and invitations to shows that the director obtained and even requested from Bouygues, which is acknowledged, establish the offence of corruption.

“The amounts are of little importance”, said the magistrate. They would be around 1,500 to 1,700 euros over several years, but these advantages were granted at the time when public construction contracts were being discussed. They ultimately benefited Bouygues for more than 35 million euros excluding tax, in Annecy. There was also the sale of land to Bouygues in 2016-2018, again in Annecy, all with juries considered biased and fraudulent, the initial discrimination criteria not having been respected, according to the prosecution.

The public prosecutor is also asking the court to uphold "favoritism" for contracts in Nîmes and Annecy which benefited around one million euros to Mupi, a consulting and project management assistance company (preparation of construction contracts and development).

Against this Mupi company, judged as a legal entity, the prosecutor is requesting a fine of 150,000 euros and a ban on applying for public contracts for two years. The Bouygues company is no longer in the trial, because it reached a settlement with the same prosecutor before the hearing, agreeing to pay a fine of 9.2 million euros and to submit to administrative monitoring.

Three witnesses, doctors from Nîmes, came to testify previously in favor of the former director (removed from his duties in November 2023), praising his management, but the prosecutor considered these depositions to be irrelevant. “We are not questioning the way Mr. Best managed the hospital, that is not what is being judged. These are facts.” The court was to reserve its judgment in the evening, after the defense lawyers had presented their arguments.