Prison sentence for former butcher turned slum landlord

The octogenarian, who will serve his year of detention under electronic surveillance, was also fined 50.000 euros, with a five-year ban on carrying out any activity in the real estate sector and a ten-year ban on purchasing properties intended for accommodation.

His wife, who acted as accountant for their two family real estate companies, was sentenced to three years in prison with probation, a fine of 25.000 euros, and the same prohibitions as her husband.

Since the mid-1990s, the couple had acquired around sixty apartments, including some entire buildings, particularly in the Noailles district.

In her judgment, the president pointed to "a system" based on three criteria: the division of lots allowing for maximum profitability, the selection of tenants chosen for their vulnerability and beneficiaries of housing assistance paid by the Family Allowance Fund, and the hasty completion of work when it was imposed by orders of danger or insalubrity.

Incomplete leases, increased surface area, work charged to tenants, deposits never returned: the Zennou system also used threats, as the court pointed out, with abusive evictions based on false acts and the difficulty vulnerable tenants had in asserting their rights.

During the hearings in March, a tenant recounted how her baby "arrived in damp conditions, surrounded by rats, and unsanitary conditions, and it lasted for four years." To bathe her infant, the young mother had to heat water in a saucepan.

The prosecutor had some very harsh words for the defendants, whom he accused of having built up their real estate assets with money from national solidarity: "In Noailles, one of the poorest neighborhoods in France, they are the new alchemists, they take the endangered stone and transform it into gold," the magistrate denounced.

The couple's two family real estate companies were fined 200.000 and 50.000 euros respectively, and the court ordered the confiscation of the seized sums of money - more than 68.000 euros - as well as numerous real estate assets, totaling nearly one million euros.

Convicted of subjecting vulnerable people to unfit housing conditions, threats or intimidation, undue collection of rent and endangering others, the court ordered the defendants to immediately pay more than 70.000 euros in damages to eight tenants.