Shocking book revisits 'gaping flaws' in government's handling of Covid-19

La gestion du Covid-19 par le gouvernement est au cœur du livre sorti par deux journalistes du Monde. MAXPPP – Illustration

In their latest political-judicial investigation called “The judges and the assassin”, journalists at Le Monde, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, reveal the behind-the-scenes of the judicial investigation into the government's management of the Covid-19 epidemic. An investigation that did not result in any indictments.

The investigation by the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), which targeted three members of the government (Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn and her successor Olivier Véran), “uncovered gaping flaws in the French health system, on which the erratic management of Covid has shed a harsh light”, affirm the journalists of Le Monde, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, in their book “The judges and the assassin”

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The book which is published this Wednesday by Flammarion, offers an account of this instruction at the CJR, based on documents – hearings, reports, emails, text messages – that the two journalists obtained. According to them, it reveals that “the State has made a mistake, through incompetence and/or unpreparedness”, “by not taking the virus seriously enough quickly”, by “knowingly leaving health response tools” such as Santé publique France “in financial discomfort”, “by neglecting the stock of masks” or by “misleading the French about wearing masks”.

The health system, a “Kafkaesque universe”

The book focuses on the defense strategies of the three ministers, whose hearings focus on the lack of protective equipment for caregivers and the population, the “mistakes on the need to wear masks” or the maintenance of the first round of municipal elections in March 2020, “while clusters were multiplying”.

We read the difficulty judges have in establishing the participation of these political leaders in the commission of an offense, in particular the “endangering others” which motivates an indictment – the only one pronounced, that of Agnès Buzyn will be annulled in cassation. And also a “piling up of structures” which have made the health system a “Kafkaesque universe”, according to the authors, hampering the effectiveness of the response.

Investigation for endangering the lives of others

As a reminder, Edouard Philippe, Agnès Buzyn and Olivier Véran were the subject of this judicial investigation opened in July 2020, in particular for endangering the lives of others. Closed at the end of November, it was conducted by the CJR, the only jurisdiction authorized to prosecute and judge members of the government for crimes and offenses committed in the exercise of their functions. Placed under the more favorable status of assisted witness, the three political leaders should benefit from a dismissal of the case.

But the four years of investigation have fleshed out a file of tens of thousands of pages that could feed the investigation opened in parallel by the Public Health Division of the Paris Judicial Court, in which no one has been indicted at this stage according to a source close to the case. Asked by AFP about the progress of this judicial investigation, the prosecution simply indicated that the investigations against X, launched in November 2020 for voluntary abstention from fighting a disaster, endangering the lives of others and involuntary homicide and injury, were “still ongoing”.