Interview with Gérald Pandelon, a brilliant and multi-talented international lawyer.
- ‘’Arbitration is very much in the air at the moment. We live in such a dangerous and conflict-ridden world that people need more security. Somewhere along the line, it’s better to negotiate and discuss than to knock each other about.
You may have seen his face on television, because Gérald Pandelon is a frequent guest on television programmes in France and also around the world. He is not only considered one of the best attorneys in France, he is also an expert in public, commercial and criminal law. What’s more, he is one of four French attorneys accredited to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. When his name is mentioned, it is with admiration and praise for winning cases that were considered lost by his colleagues. Some even call him the Robin Hood of lawyers.
He has defended two Ph.D. dissertations, taught at prestigious universities, and written several books and hundreds of articles. One wonders how he finds the time to do all this. We would also like to briefly remind you that he was chosen from among some 68,000 attorneys in France to write about the legal profession in France for the publishing house Éditions Que sais-je? A polyglot, he is fluent in Arabic, French, Spanish, English and Portuguese. In other words, Attorney Pandelon is the lawyer to turn to when you have a legal problem.
During a recent trip to Paris, we had the privilege of meeting Attorney Pandelon. He had just published a new book on the French judicial system, and we were curious to find out more about this master of the bar. With his reputation in mind, we were expecting a rather reserved man, but the reality was quite the opposite. We found a modest, hardworking and friendly man who took the time to answer our questions. The floor is now yours, Maître Pandelon.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
I was born in France of Christian parents. When I was a year old, my father was appointed a university professor in Tunisia. As I grew up with a dual French-Tunisian culture until the age of 12, I speak Arabic. My father was a preppy socialist, and we the children always had to learn to be more royalist than the king. I therefore went to the Koranic school, which opened up my mind enormously. Tunisia was a paradise. I lived in Sfax, the country’s second largest city. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sicilians, everyone formed one big family. I actually discovered ethnic tensions only when I came back to France, and it was a huge shock to me.
My father then became a diplomat and was appointed Director General of the Alliance Française in Buenos Aires. We arrived during the Videla dictatorship and the 1978 World Cup – for those who love football. I spent almost 4 years there. Then my father was appointed to an even higher post in Brazil. I stayed there for onlya year and a half. I was almost 16 when I returned to France. Now in my early fifties, I have lived under two totalitarian regimes, in Argentina and Brazil. It a mind-opener, because you’re guided, you’re driven, more by the unconscious than by the conscious.
Q: I wonder: when someone knocks on your door and asks for your help, how do you know that the person in front of you is telling the truth?
An excellent question. First of all, people come to me because, although I have my faults, I have two qualities. I was an attorney before I became an attorney, as they say in Corsica, a zita e a muta. That means: I hear nothing, I see nothing, I say nothing. In short, I’m a very discreet man. And secondly, in France I’m considered to be a very combative atorney. A pit bull. So discretion plus combativeness is attractive.
I’ve also been lucky enough to win a lot of very, very difficult cases. The great attorneys who have retired today have broken their teeth. They didn’t succeed, even though hundreds of thousands of euros in fees changed hands. As it turns out, I’ve had around a dozen high-profile cases that made the headlines but were more political-financial cases.
Everyone has heard me speak. Nothing I say is secret because I’m on the networks. I have won cases where other colleagues have lost. I’ve built up a bit of a reputation as a man of action, so much so that a journalist wrote a book about me and called me Robin Hood, because I’m very kind to the poor and very hard on the rich.
That’s not pride at all, because if you know me, despite my background, I’m a very straightforward guy, a former sportsman. Why do people tell me the truth? If on your day in court I find out that you’ve lied to me, I’ll get up and walk out. That doesni’t mean I’ll reveal it in court, but it does allow me to build a valid argument, even if the prosecutor thinks I’m talking nonsense.
Q : You were chosen by 60,000 of the top attlrneys in France to write Que sais-je? about the legal profession. Could you tell us about this experience?
I was particularly flattered when I was asked to write the Bible of the legal profession in France. At the time, our profession consisted of almost 68,000 attorneys, and I hadn’t done anything special. It was colleagues, presidents of the bar, attorneys better known than myself at the time, who told me: « You are the one who should be doing this. You have an academic education, a double doctorate, a rare qualification, you have taught law, even to attorneys and future judges, you have published many essays, articles, journals, books on the legal profession in general, on criminal justice and on international criminal law in particular, » and so on.
So, I set about this task, which took me two years to accomplish. I had to list all the codes, rules etc. that govern our profession, in 107 pages to be precise. I wrote a book which, fortunately or unfortunately, means that most attorneys in France know who I am, whether they recommend it to their children who might be studying law, or use it themselves when they want to have a more synthetic view of their profession, even though they are often specialists in their own field.
Q: I wonder how you have time to do everything. Could you tell us your secret?
I have a method that I learnt at Sciences Po [the political science faculty in Paris]. There I met a professor who was an eminent teacher. He told me: « We all have skills, we all have talents, but what counts is consistency ».
If you want to be a teacher or an attorney, you can’t work on a file in depth and then forget about it for six months. It’s better to work on each case for ten minutes a day, but you do it every day. It is thanks to this method, which I acquired before I turned twenty and which I’ve practiced for about thirty years, that I’ve been able to have a career that allows me to teach from time to time, write books and so on, while working fourteen hours a day.
I can assure you that I have written all my books and drafted and supported all my theses because I have combined the professions of lawyer, teacher and essayist.
Q: Essayist too?
I publish articles on the evolution of the criminal justice system in France on a regular basis. In December, I published a book on how our criminal justice system has evolved, as it were, as seen through the prism of the . My analysis is as follows: how can an ultra-minority union hold all the power in France today, while the vast majority of magistrates who are not members of this union are never heard?
In France, therefore, 90 per cent of the power has been given to 10 per cent of the judges. Today, it’s this union that wants to prevent Marine Le Pen from becoming president. This is an issue that is widely discussed on television. A few years ago, it was this union that wanted to get rid of Sarkozy, Fillon and Bayrou.
I have written a book on this subject, saying that we have moved from what Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th century political philosopher, called the tyranny of the majority, to what I call the tyranny of the minority. I think we need to adapt Tocqueville’s words, because today it’s the minorities who speak and impose their decisions in the name of the majority. In my very modest way, this shocks me.
For me, democracy is about sovereignty, it’s about the majority. It’s not the minority who have to enforce their laws and customs, like gender theories. Everyone is talking about LGBT. Whether you accept it or deplore it, you’re a woman, you’re a man. But why say that when it’s biologically obvious that gender has more to do with social, psychological, political or economic conditions than with biology? Biology, heredity, it’s not a dirty word. For women, for men, afterwards, everyone chooses his or her own sexual orientation, and so on. But the denial of this obvious fact is a shock to me.
Q: But it must be quite difficult speaking on it. When you talk about subjects like that, you run the risk of arousing hostility and getting into trouble, don’t you think?
You ask an excellent question, and I’ll tell you, people are very complex. First of all, an attorney is also a citizen. In other words, we have the right to think in ways that aren’t just related to our profession. You have to be careful because you can work with the left, the right, the green, the blue, those who are homosexual, those who are not, minorities, the majority and so on. That’s the first thing.
Attorneys have no duty of reserve, as their statutes do not state that they are judges. The most interesting thing is that I have been on radio and television time and time again with my ideas, which are the ideas of 70% of the French population, and paradoxically all the homosexuals in Paris have been attracted to me as a result.
Q: Really?
Because they think: « At least he’s not a hypocrite ». I have all the LGBT representatives in Paris coming to the office, and I ask them if they’re not a little embarrassed by what I’m saying, but they tell me: on the contrary. They don’t agree with me, but they tell me I’m brave and not a hypocrite. « It’s you we want to be our attorney, not the neighbour who puts us off, who always goes along with what one should say and what one shouldn’t say. What’s more, you speak well on stage. It’s always clear what you’re saying. Accept our case.” If we agree on the case and the price, we’ll go to the ends of the earth, whether you’re LGBT or not. The role of an attorney is to defend, that hasn’t changed, and I defend them.
Q: A lawyer often sees the dark side of society, the hidden underside of society. How do you deal with this?
What’s extraordinary is that it’s in our profession that we can most easily measure the extraordinary hypocrisy of the human race. Why? Because I’m lucky enough to defend people you often see on television. They tell me the exact opposite of what they say on TV. So much so that I’ve defended people who are politically more to the left, center and right. What we say about these people is the opposite of reality.
It’s often said that people on the left are politically open-minded. I’ve never seen so many racists among them. It’s said that those on the far right don’t like foreigners. I’ve never seen so many human, cultured, intelligent people who don’t have an ounce of racism. They simply say that, with the European Union and supranationalism, we have sovereignty problems.
So, in the media, the image that is given of a certain number of people and what I read in my files, what I hear, are two different things. The truth is told to the attorney, not on television.
I was brought up in a rather left-wing family, I was told to be careful, but today I realize that the presumed qualities of these left-wing people are today extreme flaws, and the devils are quite respectable people. I don’t know what to think anymore, because there’s a gap between what I’m told on TV and reality.
Q: How do you cope with these emotions?
It’s a matter of imperturbable self-possession. When I go home, of course, I’m bound by professional secrecy. I don’t say anything to my children, but I tell myself that they’ve got a lot of nerve, it’s not possible…
As an attorney, I listen. I work just like a doctor. We don’t we don’t just operate on first prize violinists or pianists, we operate or work according to the cases we are given.
Q: What can you offer DIVA readers?
The international dimension of my firm – we do a lot of arbitration, business law and international commercial law.
For example, there’s a Qatari or Lebanese company and a Swiss group and a Parisian or Spanish group. If you are appointed by one of the two companies and both agree – this is the principle of arbitration – you can set up an arbitration tribunal. The attorney, my colleague on the Qatari company side, and I, a lawyer on the Parisian company side, appoint the arbitrators as soon as the two major groups agree. We appoint the arbitrators, three maximum if it’s a domestic arbitration, but in the example I’m taking, international arbitration, it’s virtually unlimited, we can have twenty, thirty, no problem. This is very important because our firm knows how to do this. And it’s not just international criminal law, it’s also, and above all, international business. That’s the first point.
Where I can also be attractive is for people who want to buy property in France, because we have the navigational skills to ensure that they don’t pay a lot of tax. So, they can make the purchase in France because my firm is approved to simplify the transaction as a real estate agent. I’m a certified real estate agent.
We’ve already talked about this a little, I’ve also set up, with a friend, a small group in which I’m a shareholder, a small group in which we take French investors to Africa and introduce them to major investors, often African billionaires, and it’s we who organize meetings with public and private decision-makers here in France.
Fourthly, the International Criminal Court is a key, an extraordinary calling card. Even the well-known Dupont-Moretti was turned down, I believe, by the ICC. I was lucky enough to be immediately offered a position at the ICC, which gives me a calling card. It’s extraordinary because even if you’re not going to plead hate crimes every day, the simple fact that you’re accredited to the International Criminal Court means that the whole world can appoint you, maybe not for criminal cases but for business cases, because they know you’re accredited. There are a lot of French attorneys all over the world, and I’m an international lawyer, but they’re not attached to a court.
In short, it’s for arbitration and for international affairs with a criminal dimension, politico-financial affairs, ambassadors, businessmen, journalists who are sometimes also implicated.
Q: Have you ever refused cases?
Yes, I’ve always turned down rape cases, especially child rape cases. I’ve even had a case involving a person who unfortunately caused quite a stir in France. There were even parties in Belgium, who offered me a million euros. Over 10 years of proceedings, that’s about 50,000 to 100,000 euros a year, and I refused. He had raped children, then murdered them. He wanted me to take care of it at all costs, because he said I was the star of the bar.
If I can add one more, it was unlike 99.9% of attorneys who do international criminal cases. As far as I’m concerned, for a very limited category of people, I don’t believe in the possibility of rehabilitation. In this respect, I’m an atypical lawyer.
Q: In what sense?
Atypical because, when you defend people who have 40 criminal convictions on their record, and you find yourself before a sentencing judge, all the lawyers often say: he’s got a wife, he’s got a job, so he can get away with it. By the way, if he can get away with it, it has to do with his testosterone levels. The lower it is, the more he is reintegratable into society, but if it’s too high, he’s not reintegratable.
It’s a forensic biological analysis. My colleagues need to stop talking nonsense. One in 100 will be reintegrated. And we’re fighting for that 1%. But for the rest, we do our job.
Q: But what can we do with the 99% remaining ones?
Recidivism is 80%. But what can we do about that? You know, when you’re 22, 23, you’re not very old, but if you’ve already got 17 convictions on your record, that’s a lot.
Do you think that this 22-year-old guy, who earns 1,000 euros a day from drug dealing, who has no job skills or training, is going to go and work as a salesman for 1,000 euros a month, where you have to stick to schedules and so on? They earn 1,000 euros net per day, 30,000 euros net per month in cash. I know 25-year-olds who are my customers, who earn 10,000 euros net a day, all year round.
That’s VAT. When they get arrested, it’s VAT, the value-added or non-added tax. That means it’s part of the risk. That’s what I call VAT.
Q: Maybe the law will have to be changed.
The law in France is already very tough because, contrary to everything they say on TV, criminal justice in France is not weak but very severe. It’s just that judges don’t enforce the law to the extent that it should be enforced.
Why not? Because judges consider that his mother wasn’t there, and his father was violent. So, in a way, it’s the figure of the victim, the figure of the rebel shining through the delinquent.
Q: So it’s very lucrative to sell drugs in France?
It’s very lucrative: 4 billion a year in cannabis sales. It’s in the lead of small and medium-size entrprises, SMEs. The first, rather substantial sector in France is cannabis. The first step is to collect the money. The second step is money laundering. For example, they’re going to buy all the shisha bars in the 7th, 8th and 16th arrondissements, all. They’ll give 400,000, 500,000 euros in cash to the seller and to the atorney.
Q: Is that possible?
Yes, there are transactions like that every day. The property deed will declare that they sold the shisha bar for a token one euro because it was deep in debt. The bar never has any debts, but this makes it possible to claim that, because current liabilities far exceed assets, the business can not simply be liquidated. But the buyer acquires full ownership rights, called in bonis.
Q: It’s dangerous what you’re saying, because you’re giving people ideas…
You’re very smart. In fact, what I’m telling you, I’m telling you directly, because it’s an open secret. Not just criminal lawyers but 100% of lawyers, because we’re talking about drafting sessions for businesses, for leases in this case, all commercial lawyers know this. And it’s not impossible that the lawyer doesn’t get any of the profits. This creates a lot of problems in today’s society. In fact, people addicted to cannabis who go on to cocaine are the descent into hell for society.
In France, there are 5 million daily cannabis users. 600,000 daily cocaine users. 150,000 daily users of synthetic drugs (LSD, crack, heroin etc.). The drug market is worth 4 billion, in other words, it’s the biggest French SME category. As I said before, it’s cannabis. I wrote a book on this subject, La France des caïds, on narco-banditism, which was published in June 2020 by Max Milo.
I’ve shown that it’s impossible for this type of trafficking to flourish without – fortunately for the thugs, and unfortunately for society – the support of elected local representatives. Not all of them – there are 36,700 communes in France – but 10 or 20, that’s bad enough, which necessarily work on a give-and-take basis, just to keep the peace.
Q: They do it only for social peace?
Yes. If the dealing is confined to the housing estates, they don’t come into the city centers, they don’t snatch people’s bags, there’s no shoplifting, burglaries. So, there’s even a spatial geography of delinquency, a spatial hierarchy of delinquency. It happens in the housing estates, it happens at the top of the political heap.
Q: You’ve just published a new book about justice. What is your motivation, and why do you still feel the urge to write?
I write because I hate injustice. All my books have a guiding principle, whatever the subject, but I hate injustice. I was born into a rather sheltered family, my father a diplomat, my mother a physics teacher. Then, from one day to the next, my mother fell seriously ill. We lived in Brazil. She had to be repatriated to France for treatment, and my father was a diplomat and therefore absent. I found myself practically on my own at the age of 14/15, living abroad in a foster home.
I saw that the people who used to kiss our asses, because my father had the rank of ambassador, suddenly treated us like dogs. Why? Because we had had everything, and in their eyes, now that I was a foster kid, I was as good as abandoned and had become a nothing. They despised those who had nothing, those whom they had adored six months earlier. I saw how superficial people were. I saw how appearances far outweighed substance. At the age of 15, I saw the hypocrisy of the system. When I returned to France, 16 years old, I wanted to do two things: defend people and get involved in politics.
I started with law and political science – Sciences Po. Law and political science fit together. But I had no desire to relive what I had experienced at 15 by going to train for the national civil service and getting involved in politics like all the other incompetents. Later, I would see politicians saying one thing one day and the opposite the day after. If you’ve flunked out of your own profession, politics is the only way left. So, I decided to become an attorney.
I like little digressions because they explain what’s essential. My latest book came out in December.
The title of the book tells a little bit about how I’ve always felt most of my life. Teenager, then lawyer. French Inquisition. With a banner or subtitle underneath, judges, not all judges, judges against justice, question mark.
Beyond injustice, I’m very drawn to the question of truth. We always insist on justice, but truth comes first, justice is its consequence. It’s because we know the truth that we can then render justice or move towards justice or even mediation in arbitration. But first we must know the truth, then we can see if we’re going to punish or negotiate. As long as an attorney doesn’t have his hands on the truth, he can’t defend.
Q: Given your experience, would you say that there’s usually a double standard when it comes to justice, i.e. if you’re well-born, you escape legal problems more easily than someone who isn’t?
Today, what we often see here is an inverted world. What’s beautiful is villainous. What’s right is wrong. What’s wrong is right. Truth is a lie. A lie is a truth.
In France, nobody knows how powerful that is. There are two points. One, France operates on an inverted model. And two, we haven’t just given power to judges, but to some very important bodies.
I’m thinking, for example, of ARCOM, the audiovisual regulatory authority. We’ve given independent administrative authorities and magistrates maximum power, even though nine times out of ten they’re militant and incompetent.
This also raises the question of democracy under the rule of law. Symbolically, Themis, the goddess of justice, is blindfolded because she must not see but must remain neutral, impartial. What we experience today is that the blindfold has come off and she sees the person she has to punish. So, she adapts her punishment to the person in front of her.
Q: What you say is serious. It’s true that European democracies are all drifting off course somewhere.
Of course, I speak more about my country than about what’s going on in Mali or Chile, because I’m French, because I practice there.
In leaving Maître Gerald we only hope that there are more people like him, brilliant and fighting for
justice.
