Francis Szpiner

Francis Szpiner
Szpiner in 2020
Member of the French Senate for Paris
Incumbent
Assumed office
2 October 2023
Mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris
In office
11 July 2020 – 7 November 2023
Preceded byDanièle Giazzi
Succeeded byJérémy Redler
Councillor of Paris
Incumbent
Assumed office
28 June 2020
MayorAnne Hidalgo
Personal details
Born (1954-03-22) 22 March 1954
Paris, France
PartyThe Republicans
EducationLycée Jacques-Decour
Alma materPanthéon-Assas University
ProfessionLawyer

Francis Szpiner (born 22 March 1954) is a French lawyer, writer and politician of The Republicans who served as the mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris between 2020 and 2023.[1] He was elected Senator of Paris in September 2023.[2] He was an attorney for several prominent French politicians.

Education and early life

He was born as the youngest of three siblings and the only son into a family with a Jewish-Polish background.[3] His grandparents fled from the Nazis and his parents were printers.[3] After he attended high school at the Lycée Jacques-Decour,[4] he studied law and then joined, in the early 1970s, the Institute of Criminology in Paris of the Panthéon-Assas University.[4] He became a lawyer and a member of the Paris Bar Association in 1975.[5]

Professional career

Throughout his career as a lawyer he represented several prominent clients before court and was a legal counselor to Jacques Chirac, Madame Claude or Bernard Tapie.[6] Szpiner represented Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the former Emperor of the Central African Republic during his trial for treason and murder in the Central African capital Bangui.[7] In June 1987, Bokassa was sentenced to death for murder, but acquitted from charges on cannibalism.[8] In 2001, he represented Michel Tabachnik in his trial regarding the mass suicides organized by Order of the Solar Temple where Tabachnik was acquitted.[9] In 2003, during Abdullah Öcalan's appeal at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, he was a lawyer representing the Turkish Government.[10]

The ECHR ruled that Öcalan did not have a fair trial and ordered Turkey to pay a remuneration.[10] He represented the former French Prime Minister and then Mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé in a trial, in which Juppé was accused of providing fictitious jobs in the city hall of Paris.[11] Juppé was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence and given 10 year political ban in January 2004.[12] Then he was the attorney for the relatives of the murdered Jewish Moroccan Ilhan Halimi. Halimi was sequestrated and killed by members of the Gang of Barbarians.[13] The prosecution alleged Halimi was murdered for being a Jew and Szpiner obtained a life sentence for the gang leader in 2006, but demanded higher sentences for his accomplices.[13] He also represented the entrepreneur Hubert Haddad who had been accused of bribing the President of French Polynesia Gaston Flosse.[14]

Haddad and Flosse were both sentenced to five year imprisonment in October 2012.[15] He represented the victims of Carlos the Jackal.[16] For Carlos he obtained a life imprisonment.[4] In 2013 he co-founded the Law Firm Stas & Associates[17] In 2015 he represented Qatar who sued Florian Phillipot for repeatedly accusing Qatar of financing terrorism.[18] He represented the Government of Senegal in a trial against the mayor of Dakar Khalifa Sall.[19] The mayor of Dakar was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for corruption charges in 2018 but pardoned by the Senegalese president Macky Sall in September 2019.[20]

The authorities of the city of Paris's announced on 8 May 2024, that a high street, ergo a boulevard in France will be named after the 2024 murdered Vladimir Putin's opponent, Alexei Navalny, and designated as L 'avenue Alexei Navalny for the 16th arrondissement, very close to the Russian embassy in Paris, with a monument memorial for the generations to come, after the initiative by Francis Szpiner's idea.[21]

Political career

In 1990, he was appointed chief of staff to Alexandre Léontieff, then president of the government of French Polynesia;[4] in 2002, he ran against Arnaud Montebourg in the sixth district of Saône-et-Loire.[22] In the municipal elections of 2020, he was elected as the mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris representing The Republicans.[23]

Tayeb Benabderrahmane case (2020-)

In 2022, Franco-Algerian lobbyist Tayeb Benabderrahmane filed a complaint as a civil party for “kidnapping, unlawful detention with torture and acts of barbarity, criminal conspiracy, and extortion in an organized group” targeting Nasser al-Khelaïfi, president of Paris Saint-Germain, in connection with his possession of sensitive documents. Francis Szpiner was at the time one of Nasser al-Khelaïfi’s lawyers.

According to Benabderrahmane’s statements and evidence gathered by the French judiciary, negotiations were allegedly conducted from Paris between his relatives and Nasser al-Khelaïfi’s legal team, including Francis Szpiner, with the aim of obtaining the handover of confidential files in exchange for his release, as well as the signing of a confidentiality protocol with the PSG president. The claimant denounced this as a “forced deal” concluded while he was detained and deprived of his rights, and considered these discussions an organized extortion. The alleged role of Francis Szpiner in these negotiations, conducted outside any legal framework, remains unclear.[24]

On 27 June 2023, the French Central Office for the Fight against Organized Crime searched Francis Szpiner’s law office and residence, alongside raids targeting Rachida Dati and Olivier Pardo. Investigators sought to determine whether lawyers for Nasser al-Khelaïfi, including Francis Szpiner, had participated in an organized extortion operation.[25][26]

The Paris Bar association challenged the seizures carried out during these operations, arguing that they infringed attorney-client privilege. However, on 11 March 2025, the French Court of Cassation upheld the validity of the seizures (judgment no. 24-80.926), paving the way for the judicial use of documents recovered from Szpiner’s law office.[27]

At the same time, in 2025, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention recognized the arbitrary nature of Tayeb Benabderrahmane’s detention in Qatar, calling on the Qatari authorities to investigate the conditions of his deprivation of liberty and to provide reparation for the harm suffered.[28]

Books

Recognition

References

  1. ^ "Paris : Francis Szpiner, un avocat célèbre maire du 16e arrondissement". Le Parisien (in French). 20 July 2020. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
  2. ^ "Francis Szpiner élu sénateur : mairie du XVIe cherche remplaçant pas trop encombrant". Le Parisien (in French). Retrieved 9 January 2024.
  3. ^ a b Nivelle, Pascale. "L'ai-je bien défendu ?". Libération (in French). Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d "Francis Szpiner". Grands Avocats (in French). Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  5. ^ a b Bariety, Aude (6 April 2021). "Me Francis Szpiner, au nom du droit... et de la politique". Le Figaro (in French). Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  6. ^ Gréco, Betrand. "Statut de Paris : le maire du 16e, Francis Szpiner, "lance un appel à Hidalgo"". Le Journal du Dimanche (in French). Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  7. ^ Shoumatoff, Alex (June 1987). "Fall of a savage emperor". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  8. ^ Goldsmith, Michael (13 June 1987). "Bokassa sentence to death to die for Murders during reign". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  9. ^ "Cinq ans fermes requis contre Tabachnik" [Tabachnik faces five-year prison sentence]. Le Nouvel Obs (in French). 27 April 2001. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
  10. ^ a b "Case of Öcalan v. Turkey" (PDF). European Court of Human Rights. 12 March 2003.
  11. ^ "Bio express. Francis Szpiner avocat depuis 1975". Le Progres (in French). Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  12. ^ "Former French prime minister convicted in fake jobs scheme". NBC. 30 January 2004. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  13. ^ a b "Gang leader receives life in prison for killing". NBC News. 11 July 2009. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  14. ^ Viatge, Jean-Pierre. "La santé d'Hubert Haddad met en question la suite du procès". Tahiti infos, les informations de Tahiti (in French). Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  15. ^ rédaction, La (4 October 2012). "5 ans de prison requis pour Gaston Flosse et Hubert Haddad". Radio1 Tahiti (in French). Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  16. ^ "Terrorist Carlos the Jackal to stand trial for 1975 murders". CNN. 12 December 1997. Archived from the original on 23 August 2004. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  17. ^ "CABINET D'AVOCATS STAS & ASSOCIÉS - Szpiner Toby Ayela Semerdjian". STAS avocats associés (in French). Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  18. ^ "Nicolas Sarkozy rallié par Francis Szpiner... avocat d'Alain Juppé et du Qatar". www.marianne.net (in French). 4 September 2016. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  19. ^ Wemaere, Alcyone (10 July 2018). "Sénégal : au procès en appel de Khalifa Sall, deux avocats français face-à-face". France 24 (in French). Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  20. ^ "Khalifa Sall, Dakar's ex-mayor, pardoned by Senegal president". BBC. 29 September 2019. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  21. ^ "In Paris, a street near the Russian embassy will be named after Alexei Navalny". Ground News. 11 November 2024.
  22. ^ "Francis Szpiner, suppléant d'Eric Raoult". Le Parisien (in French). 16 May 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
  23. ^ Nelken, Sacha; Cosnard, Denis (18 January 2020). "Municipales à Paris : Francis Szpiner, un avocat vedette pour garder le 16e arrondissement à droite". Le Monde (in French). Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  24. ^ "Séquestration supposée d'un lobbyiste au Qatar : le rôle présumé de Rachida Dati et Francis Szpiner en question" (in French). 27 June 2023. Retrieved 3 October 2025.
  25. ^ "Paris: des perquisitions à la mairie du 7e arrondissement et dans deux cabinets d'avocats". BFMTV (in French). 27 June 2023. Retrieved 3 October 2025.
  26. ^ "Séquestration de Tayeb Benabderrahmane au Qatar : Rachida Dati perquisitionnée". L'Équipe (in French). Retrieved 3 October 2025.
  27. ^ https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/juri/id/JURITEXT000051335991/
  28. ^ "En conflit avec Nasser al-Khelaïfi, le lobbyiste franco-algérien Tayeb Benabderrahmane fait reconnaître par l'ONU sa « détention arbitraire » au Qatar en 2020". L'Équipe (in French). Retrieved 3 October 2025.
  29. ^ a b Szpiner, Francis. "Francis Szpiner - livres et romans de l'auteur aux Editions Table Ronde". www.editionslatableronde.fr (in French). Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  30. ^ Mat d'echecs - Francis Szpiner - Balland - Grand format - Le Hall du Livre NANCY (in French).
  31. ^ "A story of women".
  32. ^ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (15 February 1990). "Story of Women". Chicago Reader. Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  33. ^ Aron, Matthieu (22 November 2020). "Quand maître Szpiner se met dans la tête d'une criminelle". L'Obs (in French). Retrieved 19 December 2021.
  34. ^ "Décret du 14 novembre 2000 portant promotion et nomination". www.legifrance.gouv.fr. 14 November 2000. Retrieved 1 January 2022.
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