The last exchange of text messages was at the end of January 2021. It was about a TV documentary, L'Affaire qui a fait exploser la droite ("The affair that blew up the right wing"), in which he had agreed to take part – in particular, to discuss the Bygmalion case (involving former president Nicolas Sarkozy hiding the true cost of his failed 2012 re-election bid), which he had investigated. At the last minute, he changed his mind. "I'm always worried when it comes to matters I can't discuss," he wrote at first. Then, a few days later, he added: "After further consideration, given the context of the documentary and the current proceedings, I can't and don't want to appear in the documentary at all."

Right up to the end, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, who died at the age of 71, remained an affable, thoughtful man, sometimes torn between the neutrality required of judges and his desire to share the major cause of his life: justice. His death, announced by the Ministry of Justice on Friday, May 10, sparked an outpouring of sympathy and tributes, highlighting how this slender man, with a mischievous look behind thin glasses and an eternal little mustache, had acquired, over decades of spectacular investigations, the status of an icon.

In fact, no one embodied better than he did the figure of the intrepid investigating judge whose investigations make the powerful tremble. Even Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti, whose hostility to the profession is well known, paid tribute. "France has lost a great judge and justice an immense servant. I send my heartfelt condolences to his family and friends," he wrote on X.

Born in the wealthy suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris, in 1952, Van Ruymbeke found his calling at an early age. As soon as he graduated from the National School for the Judiciary (ENM) in 1977, he asked to investigate economic and financial cases. Appointed to the Caen court in Normandy in 1979, when he was just 27, he took over a case that was soon to make him famous: The investigation incriminated President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's minister of labor, Robert Boulin, in connection with the suspicious purchase of a plot of land in Ramatuelle on the French Riviera. The implication of the statesman, who was then perceived as a potential prime minister, caused quite a stir. This was the start of the investigations into political-financial scandals, conducted by a few courageous investigating judges, at a time when justice was more often than not at the behest of political power.

You have 69.67% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.