France’s national financial prosecutor’s office has announced the opening of an investigation into alleged illegal campaign funding for President Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 election campaign.
According to the French newspaper Parisien, in November, the country’s national financial prosecutor’s office launched a preliminary investigation led by three investigating judges, including Serge Tourneur, who in 2017 indicted former Prime Minister François Fillon, who subsequently withdrew from the race. Although opinion polls indicated his chances to get ahead of Macron.
The investigation began in March after a Senate report focused on money laundering by private consulting firms and their tax evasion.
She pointed out that McKinsey’s office in France may not have paid taxes for the past ten years, and that government spending on advisory services doubled on average from 2018 to 2021, reaching one billion euros a year.
After checking McKinsey’s headquarters in May of this year, the plaintiffs decided to add suspicions of “nepotism” and “illegal campaign finance” to a purely financial case, requiring an investigation into whether the US company enjoyed a privileged position in awarding government contracts.
According to the newspaper’s sources, all investigators have is the relationship between the head of state’s entourage and McKinsey, and about the work of consultants from this company on Macron’s election campaign during the 2017 presidential election.
According to the Mond newspaper, they allegedly held certain positions in the presidential republic in the En-Nahda party and in ministries. The prosecutor’s office refused to comment on the newspaper’s information.
Source: TASS