Marlène Schiappa's explanations were not enough to dispel doubts. The Senate voted this Wednesday by show of hands to award the prerogatives of a commission of inquiry to the Finance Committee, for a period of three months, to conduct a fact-finding mission on the Marianne Fund launched in 2021 by the Secretary of State.
The Marianne Fund, a project to promote the "values of the Republic" launched after the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty in April 2021 by Marlène Schiappa - then Minister Delegate for Citizenship - has been at the heart of a controversy since revelations by the weekly Marianne and France 2 at the end of March. According to their investigation, the main beneficiary of the fund, the USEPPM association, received an endowment of 355,000 euros that would have only fed a website and publications little followed on social networks. Some 120,000 euros were also used to pay two of its former leaders. The Mediapart website then revealed that several left-wing personalities had been denigrated in content posted online by another structure financed by the fund, "Reconstruire le commun", which obtained 330,000 euros.
Work to begin next week
The Finance Committee of the Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, had unanimously asked on 3rd May, on the initiative of its PS president Claude Raynal, to be endowed with the prerogatives of a commission of inquiry into the Marianne Fund. This request obtained this Wednesday morning the unanimous approval of the Law Commission, despite the opening, in the meantime, of a judicial investigation for suspicions of embezzlement of public funds in the management of this fund. Thanks to this green light, it will thus have for three months the important powers granted to committees of inquiry: the people it wishes to interview are required to respond to the summons and take an oath.
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This commission of inquiry, whose rapporteur will be Senator LR Jean-François Husson, should look into "the creation of the Marianne Fund, the selection of projects and the allocation of grants, the control of their execution and the results obtained with regard to the objectives of the fund".
It will begin its work next week with the hearing on Tuesday of the prefect Christian Gravel, secretary general of the interministerial committee for the prevention of delinquency and radicalization (CIPDR), and the magistrate Jean-Pierre Laffite, deputy secretary general of the CIPDR. The CIPDR coordinates the action of the ministries and the use of budgetary resources devoted to the policy of prevention of delinquency and radicalization and as such, the General Secretariat is in charge of the administrative management of the fund.
