C O M P A R AT I V E S T U D Y claim he complained that the French courts had violated his father’s right to the presumption of innocence, since they had declared his father responsible for the crime, although the criminal proceedings had lapsed and he had never been found guilty prior to his death. On the point, the Court reaffirmed that a distinction had to be made between decisions or statements that reflect the opinion that the person concerned is guilty and those which merely describe a state of suspicion. The former violate the presumption of innocence, while the latter have been found to be in conformity with the spirit of Article 6 of the Convention. Besides, the Court reiterated that Article 6 (2) of the Convention applies also to situations where the person concerned is not, or is no longer, the object of a “criminal charge”, for instance to judicial decisions taken after the discontinuation of the criminal proceedings or after an acquittal and that that if the national decision on compensation contains a statement imputing the criminal liability of the respondent party, this could raise an issue falling within the ambit of Article 6 (2) of the Convention. In the present case the Court noted that the Court of Appeal in its judgment held “that the constituent elements of the offence of misappropriation of corporate assets to the detriment Matra and Hachette are established for that period against Mr Jean-Luc Lagardère”635: such a statement leaves no room for doubt that the Court of Appeal considered the applicant’s father guilty as charged, even though the prosecution against him had lapsed and no court had ever found him guilty while he was alive. Hence Article 6 (2) of the Convention had been violated by the decision on the national court. Furthermore, in Clave636 case, elaborating on the scope of the presumption of innocence, ECtHR clarified that Article 6 (2) does not only apply to the operative part of a judgment – to the decision whether or not the defendant is found guilty – but also to its reasoning. In this case, the applicant was the father of a daughter whose former wife laid information with the police that the applicant had sexually abused his daughter. The daughter was questioned by police and a psychological expert was commissioned to assess the credibility of her statements. The applicant was charged with sexual abuse of children and sexual abuse of persons entrusted to him for upbringing. Regional Court Muenster acquitted him of all charges, and give reasoning pointing out that “…the Chamber assumes, in sum, that the core events described by the witness have a factual basis, that is, that the accused actually carried out sexual assaults on his daughter in his car. Nevertheless, the acts could not be substantiated, in terms of either their intensity or their time frame, in a manner that would suffice to secure a conviction. The inconsistencies in the witness’s testimony were so marked that it was impossible to establish precise facts.” The applicant considered that, despite the fact that the appellate court 635 636 Ibid. § 20. Clave v Germany, no. 48144/09, ECHR, 15.01.2015. 141