An osteopath tried from this Monday in Paris for having stripped millions of euros from clients under sectarian influence

“Do you really realize the grace of being with me?” : an osteopath accused of having taken advantage of the weakness of 51 clients to rob them of millions of euros, in a context of sectarian influence, is on trial from Monday by the Paris criminal court. On the other hand, Antonino Mercuri presented himself as the osteopath of celebrities like Bill Clinton or François Mitterrand.

But on the other hand, the investigation uncovered a man described as a “guru”, who isolated certain people from their social circle and kept them under his thumb, siphoning off their money. For these facts which he contests, his defense seeing it as the trial “of the benefits of alternative medicine and meditation”, the defendant faces five years in prison.

Impoverishment of victims

The 64-year-old practitioner is being prosecuted for having manipulated certain psychologically vulnerable patients under esoteric rhetoric, following a death, illness or breakup, and having drained them financially, sometimes to the point of over-indebtedness, under the pretext of “care” to “liberate” them. “The victims we defend saw their savings taken away, or even found themselves banned from banking, they had to take out consumer loans or transfer their real estate assets to share accommodation with other members of the bloodless group,” describe to AFP Me Mathieu Petresco and Olivier Morice, lawyers for five civil parties and Unadfi, an association fighting against sects.

The impoverishment of some made the fortune of the “master”. Over the period in question, from 2012 to 2018, investigators calculated that Antonino Mercuri received 12.97 million euros from clients - astronomical sums considered incompatible with classic osteopathic activity, even high-end. Reported to justice in 2015 by Miviludes, the interministerial mission for vigilance and the fight against sectarian aberrations, the accused also holds assets of around fifty real estate assets, valued at 26 million euros, as well as a collection of luxury watches with a purchase value of 2.4 million euros.

“He worked like a drug dealer with a drug addict”

“I buy watches like I buy clothes,” confides Antonino Mercuri in one of the numerous intercepted communications which feed this file. Often sent to him by a psychotherapist, considered herself under influence, the civil parties were first impressed by this “visionary” osteopath, who said he had prolonged the life of François Mitterrand by treating him for ten years. A misleading CV: the investigation established that he only met the President of the Republic, who was sick with cancer, twice and was never one of his official caregivers.

Very quickly, certain clients were embarked on a spiral of “treatments”, “meditations”, “professional meetings” or “internships” in Compiègne (Oise) or in Portugal. “Mandatory” services ever closer, ever more expensive, which they had to pay even if they did not attend. One spent more than a million euros in six years. With his esoteric speech with spiritual overtones, his omnipresence and his guilt-inducing injunctions, Antonino Mercuri “operated like a drug dealer with a drug addict,” summed up a disenchanted and ruined ex-patient.

The hypothesis of a desire for “revenge on life”

Coming from a modest family of Italian origin, the former child from Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) is driven by a “compulsive need to accumulate wealth” according to a psychiatric expertise, which notes “the narcissistic personality of the subject, marked by a grandiose image of himself, by the need to feel better and to want to dominate others, while despising them” and puts forward the hypothesis of a desire for “revenge about life.

“Those who consulted Antonino Mercuri were educated adults, professionally integrated, who freely chose to use his care and were free to end it,” his lawyers Olivier Pardo and Manon Sieraczek-Laporte told AFP. “Antonino Mercuri has, over the course of his career, seen more than 4,000 patients. Only thirteen people are now civil parties. Even more, the vast majority of people that the prosecution presents as victims do not consider themselves victims of anything,” they emphasize. The hearing, “which is akin to a witchcraft trial” according to the defense, is scheduled until the beginning of November.