• Three years of suspended prison and a fine of 5,000 euros were required against owners who did not act to put an end to a situation of insalubrity and then danger of a condominium in the city center of Marseille.
  • The former elected LR Bernard Jacquier is among the defendants, while the city is a civil party.

On the one hand, the public prosecutor who demands that a message be "addressed to all defaulting owners" in the face of the "chronicle of a death foretold". On the other, defense lawyers who believe "have heard no criminal demonstration" and plead that "it is not the rue d'Aubagne", calling on the criminal court of Marseille not to make "act of example". The shadow of the collapsed buildings of Noailles and their victims hovered this Friday during a trial on a degraded condominium, emblematic in many ways.

The former LR vice-president of the metropolis Bernard Jacquier, and owner of one of the apartments until February 2019, is indeed one of the twelve defendants. It is also a "knower" as recalled by the president of the court, who is surprised that the lawyer specializing in real estate law, still active at the time of the facts, has not found a legal way to remedy the inaction of the trustee.

In fact, several successive decrees hit this condominium located in the Belle-de-Mai district, near the Saint-Charles train station. The first, dated April 4, 2017, notes an insalubrity, then reversible, and prescribes work. But no major work capable of reversing the situation is carried out, even after a formal notice from the prefecture in August 2018. On February 22, 2019, the city of Marseille this time issued an order of imminent danger. The building was evacuated.

"I didn't sell, I got rid of it"

"I had proposed a judicial administrator, but this was not possible because of the accounts receivable of the condominium, defends himself at the bar Bernard Jacquier. I did not feel able to initiate proceedings to force the trustee to make a procedure for those who do not pay their charges. Instead, he decides to sell his property. A compromise was signed in October 2018, at a price of 4,000 euros, with another owner who already has two apartments in the building, where his mother also lives.

"In fact, I didn't sell, I got rid of it, as I didn't know the exit of the tunnel," says Bernard Jacquier. His lawyer, Me Béatrice Dupuy, argues that the facts alleged against his client run only over a period of two months, between the formal notice of 2018 and the signing of the sales agreement, in which he withdraws from all decisions taken subsequently. Like her colleagues, she also refutes the intentional element and the proper notification of the order by the syndic.

"Not merchants of sleep"

In this trial, one of the main defendants, who has since died, is missing from the stand. His personality indeed dots the file, and his triple hat, as he combined the functions of trustee, owner of one of the buildings of the building and property manager (Bernard Jacquier had entrusted him with the management of his). "There are people who did not pay their charges because of disputes with him, he had a single water meter for the entire condominium," says one of the defendants who inherited the apartment in joint ownership from his mother. "We did AGs, but six months later, we saw each other again, nothing had moved," says a defendant who had bought his apartment for 44,000 euros, and sold it in 2021 for 10,800 euros. "I had said that I agreed to the work, I asked for proof of charges from the trustee who did not provide them," says another owner.

"It is obvious that these profiles are not merchants of sleep," says prosecutor Guillaume Bricier. However, it requires a three-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 5,000 euros against each civil personality, without distinguishing between them or raising Bernard Jacquier's status as an elected official. "The first duty of an owner is to take care of his property," he says. These lawsuits are also there to show that we cannot do nothing. We are not in a trustee GA here, we are here to respond to criminal offences. »

"Today we are on a shipwreck of a building, and we unfortunately know what this can lead to in this city, to collapse," also recalls Guillaume Bricier. The city of Marseille, for its part, has joined the proceedings as a civil party. The deliberations will be delivered on June 2. The fate of the building is already sealed: it is destined for destruction.

  • Justice
  • Lawsuit
  • Habitat
  • Insalubrity
  • Housing
  • Collapsed buildings in Marseille
  • Marseille
  • PACA