Mayor used council's canteen to get free meals for a decade, court told

A French mayor stood trial on Tuesday over charges he used taxpayers’ money to pay for more than a decade’s-worth of daily meals in the cafeteria of a job he left more than a decade ago.

Hubert Falco, 75, faces charges of “concealing the misuse of public funds” in what has been dubbed the “Falco’s fridge” affair as the lavish meals were allegedly kept for the Toulon mayor and his wife in a specially designated refrigerator at the county council headquarters of the Var region in southern France.

The Right-winger and ally of Emmanuel Macron is accused of racking up a bill for the council of €64,000 (£56,231) between April 2015 and October 2018 – the period targeted by the investigation.

He also stands accused of getting the council to wash his dirty linen for free.

The ‘Falco’s fridge’ affair

Mr Falco, who was council president from 1994 to 2002 and who remains honorary president, is said to have turned up for free meals at the cafeteria on a near-daily basis.

He is even accused of getting the restaurant’s maître d’ and a cook to prepare evening and weekend meals for him and his wife for which they were paid overtime in wages taken out of council coffers. Staff then stored the meals and ingredients in “Falco’s fridge”, say prosecutors.

Also in the dock is Marc Giroud, the Var region’s president during the period concerned, who is similarly accused of “misuse of public funds”. He was forced to step down last year over another corruption conviction.

The scandal erupted after Laurent Defraize, the department’s former chief cook, blew the whistle on the pair before committing suicide a month after giving testimony in February 2020.

During questioning, several witnesses defended the ex-council presidents by saying that Mr Defraize was a “manipulator” and “consumer of cannabis and cocaine”, which they said he hid in the fridge in question.

However, numerous other council employees backed up the late cook’s claims regarding the free meals.

Anticor, an anti-corruption NGO, and the local UNSA union are civil plaintiffs in the case.

‘Grotesque’ accusations

According to his lawyer, Thierry Fradet, Mr Falco is “impatient to express himself”. He dismissed the accusations as “grotesque and based on an agreement between various characters”.

“We will reserve our explanations for the court,” he said, adding that he would call 21 witnesses in his client’s defence.

Jean-Claude Guidicelli, Mr Giroud’s lawyer, called the case “judicial trickery” and argued it had come to court without a proper examination by an investigating magistrate.

“Canteen meals for two euros a pop, what a terrible waste!,” he told AFP, adding that the county council had a €50 million (£43.91 million) deficit when his client had taken over as president in 2015 and that he had left it with a €250 million surplus.

The trial continues.