Marseille police officer convicted for warning friend of URSSAF inspection
A 47-year-old police officer from Marseille has been sentenced on Friday to one year in prison with a suspended sentence and a five-year ban from all public employment for warning a friend of an imminent URSSAF inspection.
Abuse of office and obstruction of tax inspection
According to TF1 Info, a 47-year-old Marseille police officer, a member of the South anti-crime brigade with 23 years of service, was sentenced on Friday by the criminal court. The court found him guilty of warning one of his friends, head of security at several nightclubs, of the imminent departure of URSSAF inspectors towards a rooftop in La Ciotat on 26 July 2025.
The offence was classified as "taking action having the effect of defeating the law". The police officer, who worked as a tattooist during his days off, had deleted his WhatsApp messages, explaining to the court that he did not wish to "give the gift" to the internal investigation body "of searching through (his) private life". However, he had left an SMS to his security-guard friend that evening: "Answer urgent", immediately followed by an unanswered call.
On the security chief's telephone, several messages addressed to his employers were found: "URSSAF leaving Marseille for inspection" and "My mate warned me". The court found that the guilt of the two defendants could be deduced "from the chronology and the coincidence" of the calls and messages exchanged that evening, "followed immediately by measures taken to thwart the URSSAF inspection".
Sentencing of the security chief
The security chief, a former member of a neo-Nazi group dissolved in 2019, received a harsher sentence. He was sentenced to six months in prison to be served under electronic monitoring, a fine of €1,500 and a five-year ban from public office.
Disputed defence
In his defence, the security chief claimed that the information had reached him not from his police officer friend, who was on leave that evening, but from "a girl in the car park". The police officer, for his part, justified the exchanges by his intention to visit his friend's workplace. He explained his final message "did it go well?" by his later knowledge via social media of this failed inspection.
The police officer's lawyer, Me Philippe Gassend, denounced a "bungled and incomplete procedure", arguing that since the original informant had not been identified, "chronological proximity (of contacts) is not enough". The police officer had only admitted to illegally accessing files, which he described as a "moral error". He had justified himself: "I checked on my ex-wife's partner, as he was entering my children's life at that time".
The prosecutor had considered in his submissions that the civil servant was "not fit to serve within the police".
Source: TF1 Info