François Fillon back in the Assembly: the former Prime Minister is heard from 5:30 p.m. this Tuesday, May 2 on his links with Moscow and his presence for a time on two boards of directors of Russian multinationals.
The former presidential candidate will appear before the commission of inquiry initiated by the National Rally (RN) and devoted to "
political, economic and financial interference by foreign powers
".
This commission, which has been working for several weeks and must complete its work in early June, is controversial in the Assembly: the other camps reproach the far right for a strategy of “diversion”
in
the face of accusations of proximity between the RN and the Kremlin.
Since his defeat in the 2017 presidential election, François Fillon has moved into the private sector and has notably sat on the boards of directors of the Russian companies Sibur (petrochemicals) and Zarubeshneft (hydrocarbons).
"The refusal of the West"
On February 24, 2022, just as the Russian army invaded Ukraine, the former prime minister drew strong criticism after deploring "
the refusal of the West
" to hear Moscow's claims concerning NATO. .
The next day, he announced that he would resign from his Russian mandates.
François Fillon had joined in December 2021 the board of directors of Sibur, in particular controlled by Leonid Mikhelson, one of the richest men in Russia, and Gennadi Timtchenko, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin targeted by sanctions.
A few months earlier, in June 2021, he had joined the same instance at Zarubezhneft, owned by the Russian state.
His hearing takes place while the National Financial Prosecutor's Office has also opened a preliminary investigation into suspicions of bribery of a foreign public official targeting Cifal, a French trading company operating in Russia.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Cifal was commissioned by the Congolese company Orion – headed by Lucien Ebata, special adviser to the President of Congo-Brazzaville Denis Sassou Nguesso – to find an investor in Russia to sell its shares in the MBK oil field to. congo.
Business provider
With this in mind, the manager of Cifal Gilles Rémy called on François Fillon to put him in touch with a Russian businessman.
In this contract, François Fillon was remunerated as a business contributor.
No suspicion of corruption currently weighs on him, said this source familiar with the matter.
The former Prime Minister and ex-deputy of Sarthe is back at the Palais Bourbon almost a year after his conviction on appeal in the case of the fictitious jobs of his wife Pénélope to four years in prison, including one year firm, 375,000 euros fine and ten years of ineligibility.
The couple had announced their intention to appeal.
The commission of inquiry into foreign interference has been launched by the RN in an attempt to cut short accusations that the far-right party is an agent of Russian influence in France.
Jean-Philippe Tanguy (RN) is the president and the Renaissance deputy and ex-LR Constance Le Grip rapporteur.
Several officials interviewed
Several politicians have already been heard, in particular the RN MEP Thierry Mariani, targeted by two preliminary investigations into possible acts of corruption and influence peddling with a Franco-Russian association.
For Constance Le Grip (Renaissance), “
the most salient point
” of this commission, “
it remains the strategy of influence and interference between Russia and the FN, which has become RN, with Marine Le Pen meeting at the Kremlin
”, before the presidential election of 2017. “
We are not fooled by the strategy
” of diversion of the RN in this commission, she underlines.
Thursday, May 4, the former RN MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhauser will be heard on the Russian loan of 9.4 million euros granted to Marine Le Pen's party in 2014. He is the subject of an investigation by the national financial prosecutor's office on commissions he would have received for obtaining this loan and the conditions under which the party obtained in 2017 from a French businessman very established in Africa, Laurent Foucher, another loan of 8 million euros .
