A Free Trip to Abu Dhabi - Hôtel de Ville
In 2015 Pierre Maudet, a member of the Geneva government that meets in this town hall, let the authorities of Abu Dhabi pay for his family's trip to the Formula 1 Grand Prix and then hid who had paid. Convicted, acquitted on appeal and convicted again by the Federal Court, he received his final sentence in May 2023, just weeks after voters had put him back in government.
À propos de ce lieu
For over five centuries the Hôtel de Ville has been the seat of Geneva's government: a stern stone town hall whose sixteenth century cobbled ramp let councillors ride to the upper floors on horseback, and whose Alabama Room saw the first Geneva Convention signed on 22 August 1864 and the Alabama arbitration of 1872. It is also where the career of Pierre Maudet rose, fell and rose again. In late November 2015 the state councillor flew to Abu Dhabi with his family for the Formula 1 Grand Prix, with business class flights and a stay at the Emirates Palace paid for by the emirate's authorities, and for more than two years he claimed a friend had paid. After admitting on television in 2018 that he had hidden part of the truth, he lost the presidency, the police and the airport, and resigned in October 2020. A Geneva court convicted him of accepting an advantage in February 2021, the appeal court acquitted him in January 2022, and on 31 October 2022 the Federal Court overturned that acquittal. In May 2023 he received a final suspended sentence of 300 day fines of 400 francs and a 50,000 franc compensatory claim for the State of Geneva, weeks after voters had elected him back into the government on 30 April 2023. The crime itself happened far away, but this building has judged before: on 19 June 1762 the executioner tore up and burned Rousseau's Émile and The Social Contract in front of its door.
À retenir
- 300 day fines — Maudet's final sentence for accepting an advantage: 300 day fines of 400 francs each, suspended with two years' probation.
- 50000 Swiss francs — The compensatory claim he was ordered to pay the State of Geneva in May 2023, about the estimated value of the trip.
- 1864 year — Twelve states signed the first Geneva Convention, the founding act of the Red Cross, in this building's Alabama Room on 22 August.