Trial of Khalifa Sall: the Mayor of Dakar protects his mayor
The Khalifa Sall trial is still going on at the Dakar courthouse, on Friday morning, the pleadings of the mayor of Dakar seeks by this procedure to protect the mayor.
Khalifa Sall is suspected of embezzlement of public funds, but unlike the state that believes that money has indeed been diverted, the mayor feels himself victim of moral damage, because the image of the mayor has been chipped.
This is a particular posture, an unprecedented judicial strategy. In law, a civil party normally claims damages. But in their pleadings, the lawyers of the town hall never mentioned the question of misappropriations. All the arguments put forward at the helm, aimed only at one thing: to prove that the state has nothing to do in this trial.
“Because the budget money does not belong to the state, but to the mayor,” says one of the lawyers.
“The laws, the rules of public accounting are clear,” adds another.
For the defenders of the mayor of Dakar, the lawyers of the State are only “usurpers, because the state does not have the monopoly of the civil part”.
On Thursday, the state asked for ten billion CFA francs for moral and financial damage.
“Justice must be calm. We have the obligation to enforce the law,” explains one of the city council lawyers, who continues: “We cannot accept that our own funds, the state comes, by what alchemy elsewhere and asks six billion”.
The mayor therefore defends his mayor, Khalifa Sall, and will also have to wait for the verdict, to know if his presence in this trial is valid. Indeed, his application for a civil party, filed eight days before the trial, was paid on the merits.
Recalled that On 3 March, the Dakar public prosecutor, Serigne Bassirou Gueye, told a press conference that a judicial investigation was going to be opened against Mr. Sall, evoking a diversion of more than 2.7 million euros.
A report by the State Inspectorate General (IGE) says that funds in the amount of 1.83 billion CFA francs were “taken out of the coffers” of the city, “without justification,” said the magistrate. “We are asking for it to be justified” because the documents supposed to have been produced were not produced, the prosecutor added.
