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Francis Szpiner
Szpiner in 2020
Member of the French Senate for Paris
Incumbent
Assumed office 2 October 2023
Mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris
In office 11 July 2020 – 7 November 2023
Preceded by	Danièle Giazzi
Succeeded by	Jérémy Redler
Councillor of Paris
Incumbent
Assumed office 28 June 2020
Mayor	Anne Hidalgo
Personal details
Born	(1954-03-22) 22 March 1954 (age 70) Paris, France
Political party	The Republicans
Education	Lycée Jacques-Decour
Alma mater	Panthéon-Assas University
Profession	Lawyer

Francis Szpiner (born 22 March 1954) is a French lawyer, writer and politician of The Republicans who serves as the mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris between 2020 and 2023.^[1] He was elected Senator of Paris in September 2023.^[2] He was an attorney for several prominent French politicians.

He was born as the youngest of three siblings and the only son into a family with a Jewish-Polish background.^[3] His grandparents fled from the Nazis and his parents were printers.^[3] After he attended high school at the Lycée Jacques-Decour,^[4] he studied law and then joined, in the early 1970s, the Institute of Criminology in Paris of the Panthéon-Assas University.^[4] He became a lawyer and a member of the Paris Bar Association [fr] in 1975.^[5]

Throughout his career as a lawyer he represented several prominent clients before court and was a legal counselor to Jacques Chirac, Madame Claude or Bernard Tapie.^[6] Szpiner represented Jean-Bédel Bokassa, the former Emperor of the Central African Republic during his trial for treason and murder in the Central African capital Bangui.^[7] In June 1987, Bokassa was sentenced to death for murder, but acquitted from charges on cannibalism.^[8] In 2001, he represented Michel Tabachnik in his trial regarding the mass suicides organized by Order of the Solar Temple where Tabachnik was acquitted.^[9] In 2003, during Abdullah Öcalan's appeal at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, he was a lawyer representing the Turkish Government.^[10]

The ECHR ruled that Öcalan did not have a fair trial and ordered Turkey to pay a remuneration.^[10] He represented the former French Prime Minister and then Mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé in a trial, in which Juppé was accused of providing fictitious jobs in the city hall of Paris.^[11] Juppé was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence and given 10 year political ban in January 2004.^[12] Then he was the attorney for the relatives of the murdered Jewish Moroccan Ilhan Halimi. Halimi was sequestrated and killed by members of the Gang of Barbarians.^[13] The prosecution alleged Halimi was murdered for being a Jew and Szpiner obtained a life sentence for the gang leader in 2006, but demanded higher sentences for his accomplices.^[13] He also represented the entrepreneur Hubert Haddad who had been accused of bribing the President of French Polynesia Gaston Flosse.^[14]

Haddad and Flosse were both sentenced to five year imprisonment in October 2012.^[15] He represented the victims of Carlos the Jackal.^[16] For Carlos he obtained a life imprisonment.^[4] In 2013 he co-founded the Law Firm Stas & Associates^[17] In 2015 he represented Qatar who sued Florian Phillipot for repeatedly accusing Qatar of financing terrorism.^[18] He represented the Government of Senegal in a trial against the mayor of Dakar Khalifa Sall.^[19] The mayor of Dakar was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for corruption charges in 2018 but pardoned by the Senegalese president Macky Sall in September 2019.^[20]

The authorities of the city of Paris's announced on 8 May 2024, that a high street, ergo a boulevard in France will be named after the 2024 murdered Vladimir Putin's opponent, Alexei Navalny, and designated as L 'avenue Alexei Navalny for the 16th arrondissement, very close to the Russian embassy in Paris, with a monument memorial for the generations to come, after the initiative by Francis Szpiner's idea.^[21]

In 1990, he was appointed chief of staff to Alexandre Léontieff, then president of the government of French Polynesia;^[4] in 2002, he ran against Arnaud Montebourg in the sixth district of Saône-et-Loire.^[22] In the municipal elections of 2020, he was elected as the mayor of the 16th arrondissement of Paris representing The Republicans.^[23]

• Fantôme de papier^[24]
• Mat d'echecs^[25]
• Une affaire de femmes was adapted for screen by Claude Chabrol as A story of women.^[26][27]
• Une affaire si facile^[28]

• April 2021 Lawyer of the month by Le Figaro.^[5]
• 2011 Legion of Honour^[24]
• 2000 Received the rank of an Officer of the French Order of Merit^[29]