Tried in Paris, the former director of the Nîmes University Hospital says he is the victim of a “cabal”

Le procès de Nicolas Best, ancien directeur du CHU de Nîmes, a débuté ce lundi à Paris. Midi Libre – Archive Mikaël Anisset

The trial for favoritism and corruption of Nicolas Best, former director of the Annecy and Nîmes hospitals, opened in Paris on Monday, August 26 after a final procedural battle. 

"I was the victim of homophobic attacks by the police and the prosecution, I have a psychological fragility". For his first appearance before a court, Nicolas Best, 58, questioned on Monday August 26th only about his curriculum vitae, appeared to waver somewhat in the dock at the Paris court.

It is true that the procedural battle over the accusations of embezzlement brought by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) ended in a defeat for the defense. The court rejected a request for additional information and a request to cancel the procedure and decided to first examine the merits of the case, with two further hearings on Wednesday, August 28 and Monday, September 2.

Favoritism and corruption

The question will be whether the former boss, between 2015 and 2018, of CHANGE (Annecy and Saint-Julien hospital) then of Nîmes University Hospital, between 2018 and 2023, was guilty of favouritism and corruption in public construction contracts awarded to Bouygues in Annecy. The court must also judge possible offences in the awarding of consultancy and study contracts in Annecy and Nîmes for the benefit of another company, Mupi, also tried for concealment as a legal entity.

Launched by a report from a regional audit office in 2021, the case has resulted in a police investigation. The financial prosecutor's office has already scored points by imposing a transactional sanction on Bouygues, which agreed to pay €9.2 million to avoid a trial. A former subordinate of Nicolas Best also pleaded guilty to complicity and thus also avoided trial.

Construction markets

In presenting the case, the court specified that Bouygues had obtained, through Nicolas Best in Annecy, in 2016-2018, two major construction contracts for more than 35 million euros excluding taxes, as well as the transfer of land, under conditions deemed fraudulent. At that time, the director shared dinners and was invited to shows by the company, a formal irregularity.

The total amount of the gifts is approximately 1,700 euros over several years, a sum that earned him the accusation of corruption. Concerning Mupi, more than a million euros of contracts in Annecy and Nîmes are in question. “There is nothing dishonest or culpable in his attitude”, his lawyer, Philippe Expert, told the court, who defended the theory of a “cabal on the part of staff at the Annecy hospital, who were biased against him”.

The Court of Cassation rejected the priority questions of constitutionality, procedures aimed at having the searches at the hospital declared illegal, as well as the operative part of this half-transactional, half-classic prosecution. These requests had caused an initial postponement of the trial in November. This Monday, the defense in a way supported them again, in other forms.

It considered that the search violated the principle of medical confidentiality and also requested further hearings and confrontations of the director with the Bouygues executives, including… the group's big boss, Martin Bouygues himself.

Basically, it would only be a question of "technical problems" in the awarding of contracts, says the defense. The prosecutor François-Xavier Dulin repeated this presentation at the hearing: "We also talk about probity…".  The former director theoretically faces up to ten years
in prison for corruption.

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