In August 2014, Dominique Giroud lodged an appeal for denial of justice with the Valais Cantonal Court. The stated aim of the action was to prevent the COGEST report, which was said at the time to be imminent, from violating his privacy by disclosing confidential information about his tax file. Objective achieved. The proceedings for denial of justice made it possible to refocus COGEST's mission by making it clear that the subject of its investigation was not Dominique Giroud but the workings of the Valais institutions. If Dominique Giroud had done nothing, it is certain that COGEST would have yielded to media pressure, exceeded its remit and violated its privacy. In the end, after the cantonal court had refused to hear the case, the Federal Court (TF) had the last word. Its negative decision contains two other grounds for satisfaction for Dominique Giroud: a) Normally, given that the COGEST report had in the meantime been published, the Federal Court should have declared the proceedings moot. However, given the importance of the issues raised, the country's highest court wanted to take the matter all the way, and in the end devoted twenty highly technical and detailed pages to its recitals. In short, the proceedings initiated by Dominique Giroud were perfectly legitimate. b) If the Federal Court considers that Dominique Giroud's fundamental rights were not violated, it is because of the political dimension of the case. The Court thus confirms what we already knew: under the pretext of applying the law, many official bodies are attacking Dominique Giroud in order to satisfy political and media objectives.
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