PARIS (Reuters) -Former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is cooperating with authorities, his office said on Wednesday, after police searched his office premises as part of what a judicial source said was a preliminary probe into possible corruption. Philippe, the mayor of Le Havre, is widely seen as a potential candidate to succeed Emmanuel Macron in the 2027 French presidential election. The judicial source, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the search was "part of a preliminary investigation opened in December 2023 on charges of influence peddling, favouritism, misappropriation of public funds and psychological harassment".
French prosecutors have requested that the former chief of Egypt's Flash Airlines stand trial over a 2004 crash off the Sinai Peninsula that killed 148 people, a judicial source said Wednesday.Prosecutors made their formal request for a Nour's trial on December 22, the judicial source said.
Five people arrested in northern France last week as part of an investigation into a criminal terrorist conspiracy have been released without charge, a judicial source said Monday.But a source close to the case said Monday there was for the moment no new evidence to support that theory, even if the investigation was continuing.
The leader of a controversial tantric yoga sect was to go before a French judge on Friday, a judicial source said, after he was arrested in a probe along with over a dozen others on suspicion of kidnapping, rape and people trafficking.The arrests follow a probe into the sect launched by Paris prosecutors in July, on suspicion of kidnapping, rape and people trafficking among others.