Rachida Dati

Introduction

Rachida Dati, the former French justice minister who later served as culture minister and remains mayor of Paris’s seventh arrondissement, went on trial in Paris on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, accused of passive corruption and influence peddling. Standing trial alongside her is Carlos Ghosn, the former chief of the Renault-Nissan alliance, who was not expected to attend. At the center of the case is roughly €900,000 in fees Dati received under a lawyer’s fee contract signed with Ghosn in October 2009, while she sat in the European Parliament — money the financial prosecutors say disguised lobbying her mandate prohibited, and which she says paid for genuine legal work. Charged in 2021, she denies all of the accusations and is presumed innocent.

Background Information

Dati made her career in the judiciary before entering politics, leaving the magistracy more than twenty years ago. She served as justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2009, then was elected to the European Parliament, where she sat from 2009 to 2019. It was in the first months of that mandate that she signed the fee contract with Ghosn at the heart of this case — four months before she became a registered lawyer. She returned to government as culture minister under Emmanuel Macron from 2024 to 2026, leaving the government in February 2026 to run for mayor of Paris. That race ended in a heavy defeat against the socialist Emmanuel Grégoire, but she remains mayor of the capital’s seventh arrondissement.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The claims in this section come from a French criminal prosecution by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), which charged Dati in 2021 and brought her to trial in September 2026. She has been charged but not convicted — a trial is the adjudication of the charges, not a finding of guilt — and she is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Dati denies all of the accusations and says the money paid for genuine legal work.

The case centers on a lawyer’s fee contract dated October 28, 2009, signed between Dati and Carlos Ghosn, then head of the Renault-Nissan alliance. It provided €300,000 a year before tax from October 2009 to February 2013 — about €900,000 in total. The PNF alleges the contract served to disguise work defending the interests of the Renault group inside the European Parliament, activity her mandate as a member of the European Parliament prohibited. Prosecutors doubt the reality of the legal work, pointing to what the investigation found were “singularly limited” traces of it given the length of the engagement and the level of pay.

The prosecution’s case reads that tracelessness as evidence of wider, underground activity. It points to three parliamentary questions linked to the car industry and positions favorable to the constructor, summarized in a note Dati sent to Ghosn in February 2013 at the end of the contract; she says that document was merely legal monitoring. The contract reached French justice in the summer of 2019, during a search of Renault’s headquarters after Ghosn’s arrest in Japan in a separate case. She faces up to ten years in prison and a €450,000 fine — half the disputed sum, as concealment of the proceeds.

Dati’s defense tells a different story: that she worked exclusively as a lawyer for RNBV, the Dutch company used to manage the Renault-Nissan alliance, on international matters involving Morocco, Algeria, Turkey and Iran. She says Ghosn did not keep the notes she sent him, and her team plans to call witnesses it says will attest to her actual work. Her lawyers, Mes Olivier Pardo, Olivier Baratelli and Antoine Beauquier, said the defense will demonstrate that “the unfounded accusations of a supposed influence-peddling scheme in the European Parliament belong to an artificial intellectual construction of the prosecution.”

Ghosn, 72, living in Lebanon since fleeing Japan, was not expected at the trial. In a letter sent to the court at the end of August, he requested a postponement, saying his summons did not arrive in the legal forms and time limits, while denying any intent to delay the trial and offering to appear by video link from Beirut to explain facts he contests. “What he expects is a justice of rigor that applies the law whatever the consequences, starting with respect for procedural rules and the rights of the defense,” his Lebanese lawyer, Jean Tannous, told AFP.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The trial of a former keeper of the seals turned defendant drew scrutiny well beyond the courtroom. In the days before it opened, a collective of lawyers and magistrates wrote an open letter to the chairman of the High Council for the Judiciary (CSM), warning that the “prospect of Rachida Dati’s reinstatement” to the judiciary while she stands trial for corruption and influence peddling could undermine public confidence in the judicial system. The collective acknowledged she is presumed innocent, but noted her name appears in eight ongoing cases or proceedings. Criminal lawyer Jérôme Karsenti, a signatory, called the council’s timing “shocking”: “Be careful, you are about to judge someone who will soon be one of your own.” He also flagged the role of Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, who is to submit Dati’s reinstatement request to the council — “extremely worrying,” he said, “in terms of the relationship between politicians and judges, and more broadly, with the rule of law.”

Current Status

The trial opened in Paris on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, and is scheduled to run until September 28. Just before it began, Dati applied for reinstatement to the magistracy as of right, a request the Justice Ministry confirmed on September 4, 2026. The CSM is expected to examine her case “not before the end of September, early October” — that is, after the trial concludes. Until the court rules, Dati stands charged but not convicted, and is presumed innocent.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The stakes are highest where her remaining elected mandate sits: a conviction could carry up to five years of political ineligibility, putting her position as mayor of the seventh arrondissement directly at risk. The political dimension has already narrowed — after losing the Paris mayoral race to Emmanuel Grégoire, she is pursuing a return to the judiciary she left two decades ago. Whichever way the court rules, an outcome that will define the final chapter of an unusual double career as judge, lawyer, minister and mayor, the case has shadowed her from the contract’s surfacing in 2019 through the 2021 charging to the dock in Paris.