The corruption trial of Rachida Dati, France’s former Justice Minister and now the government’s Culture Minister, opened on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, before the Paris criminal court. Dati appears alongside Carlos Ghosn, the fugitive former chairman and chief executive of the Renault-Nissan alliance, in a case that has been building since 2019 and that now returns one of France’s best-known politicians to the dock she once presided over as a magistrate and minister.
Prosecutors allege that between October 2009 and February 2013, Dati received roughly €900,000 from RNBV, a Dutch holding company that managed the Renault-Nissan alliance, under the cover of a consultancy agreement. At the time, Dati was serving as a member of the European Parliament, having left the Justice Ministry in 2009. Investigators say the payments were not compensation for genuine legal work but a disguised form of lobbying: according to the prosecution’s case file, the sums paid to Dati were “totally disproportionate” to any documented legal services, and the arrangement in fact “masked lobbying activities” carried out on behalf of Renault-Nissan inside European institutions, where Dati sat as an elected member.
Dati faces four charges: passive corruption, passive influence peddling, receiving the proceeds of an abuse of power, and receiving the proceeds of a breach of trust. If convicted on the most serious counts, she risks up to ten years in prison, a fine of €450,000, and could be barred from holding public office — a sanction with obvious consequences for a sitting cabinet minister and Paris mayoral figure. Ghosn, who is charged with active corruption and active influence peddling, is being tried in absentia. He has lived in Lebanon since his dramatic flight from Japan in December 2019, where he had been facing separate financial misconduct charges related to his time at Nissan. Ghosn’s lawyers argued he never received proper notice of the French summons and asked for the trial to be postponed, offering to participate by videoconference instead; the court proceeded regardless, with Ghosn absent from the Paris courtroom.
The trial is scheduled to run over six half-day hearings through September 28, 2026. On its opening day, Dati used her first statements to reject the prosecution’s theory outright, insisting she had “worked exclusively as a lawyer” for RNBV and that any suggestion the payments were a corrupt pact was, in her words, an “intellectual construction” built by investigators rather than a reflection of what actually happened. Her defense maintains that the consultancy contract was legitimate, that she performed real legal advisory work for the Dutch entity managing the alliance’s affairs, and that her subsequent political career was entirely separate from that private legal practice.
The case traces back to February 2019, when French investigators opened a preliminary inquiry shortly after Ghosn’s arrest in Japan on unrelated financial charges triggered a wave of scrutiny into his global business dealings, including his relationships with French politicians and officials. A Renault shareholder filed a formal complaint with the Parquet National Financier (PNF), France’s specialized national financial prosecutor’s office, in April 2019, specifically flagging the payments to Dati. Dati was initially heard as a witness in the case before her status was upgraded; she was formally placed under investigation (mise en examen) in July 2021, more than two years after the inquiry began, following extensive document review and questioning by investigating magistrates.
The trial has drawn heavy political and media attention in France, not only because of Dati’s prominence — she is a former Justice Minister, a sitting government minister, and a longstanding figure in Paris municipal politics — but also because it reopens uncomfortable questions about Ghosn’s extensive network of relationships with French political and business elites during his two decades running Renault and, later, the broader Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance. Ghosn built one of the most powerful positions in global carmaking before his abrupt downfall in Japan, and French investigators have separately examined a series of payments and gifts he is alleged to have made to associates, employees, and public figures during his tenure. The Dati case is one of several legal threads connected to his time at the head of the alliance that French authorities have continued to pursue even after he left the country.
For Dati personally, the stakes extend well beyond the courtroom. As Culture Minister in the current government and a prominent contender in Paris political life, a conviction — particularly one carrying an ineligibility sanction — could upend her career at a moment when she has positioned herself as a serious contender for future elected office in the capital. Her legal team has signaled it will contest both the factual basis of the prosecution’s timeline and the legal characterization of the payments as corruption rather than ordinary professional compensation, arguing that French corruption law requires proof of a specific quid pro quo that, in their view, prosecutors have not established.
The court is expected to hear from financial investigators who traced the RNBV payments, as well as witnesses familiar with the internal workings of the Renault-Nissan alliance during the period in question. A verdict is not expected on the final hearing day itself; French correctional courts typically take the case under advisement (mise en délibéré) before issuing a written judgment, meaning a ruling may not come until weeks or months after the final September 28 session. Given Ghosn’s continued absence and residence in Lebanon — a country that does not extradite its nationals — any sentence imposed on him is likely to remain largely symbolic unless his circumstances change.
The case is being closely watched as a test of how French justice handles high-level political corruption allegations tied to corporate influence, and as a rare instance of a former Justice Minister — someone who once oversaw the very prosecutorial system now judging her — standing trial as a defendant in Paris’s main criminal courthouse.
