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Decision in 'Casino Wars' case
2009-11-03 13:22
A year ago, in October 2008, the French judiciary wrapped up an old legal battle of thirty years' standing between the Palais de la Méditeranée and Le Ruhl, neighbouring casinos on the Promenade des Anglais.
31 years after the disappearance of Agnès Le Roux, heiress of the Palais, the highest French court passed a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment on her 'assassin', one-time lover and ex-lawyer Jean-Maurice Agnelet.
Le Roux, then aged 29, disappeared sometime between 27 October and 2 November 1977. Her lover had always been the prime suspect, but no hard evidence was ever found to convict him. It was a change of heart by his ex-wife in 1999 which reopened the case, when she admitted that she had lied in order to furnish a false alibi for him during Halloween 1977.
Agnelet was struck off in 1978, and Agnes Le Roux was officially declared dead in April 2007.
Agnelet was condemned to 20 years in prison by the assize court in Aix-en-Provences after they concluded that he had unlawfully killed Le Roux when he discovered she had sold her shares in the Palais to the boss of Le Ruhl, Jean-Dominique Fratoni, who was close to the then Mayor Jacques Médecin, and considered by the police to be a kingpin in the local underworld. At the time, Agnelet was found guilty of appropriating the money - 3 million Francs (€457,000) - which le Roux had placed in a Swiss bank account As a result he served a short sentence in the 1980s.
But Le Roux's mother, Renée, never stopped trying to re-open the case - which the Nice courts had abandoned partly because Agnelet had been a well-known figure and regional president of the League of Human Rights.
Agnelet's lawyer maintains that he is innocent and confirmed that he will take the case to the European COurt of Human Rights.'The real debate will take place there,' he says, 'because, in the total absence of any proof, the original indictment should never have been brought.'