After the decision to refer the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, to justice, the majority learned, Monday, October 3, the indictment at the end of September of the secretary general of the Elysée. Alexis Kohler is being prosecuted for “illegal taking of interests” in the context of the judicial investigation aimed at his family and professional ties with the shipowner MSC. Emmanuel Macron’s right-hand man, also placed under the status of assisted witness for “influence peddling”, is not subject to any judicial control measures and retains his post. Franceinfo explains to you what it is accused of and its line of defense.
Alleged interventions in favor of the Italian-Swiss shipowner MSC
The case arose after the publication, in 2018, of several Mediapart articles on a possible conflict of interest between Alexis Kohler’s positions in the civil service and his links with the Italian-Swiss shipowner Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC ), founded and run by his mother’s cousins, the Aponte family.
Based in Geneva, MSC – one of the largest container carriers in the world – is a major customer of STX France (now renamed Chantiers de l’Atlantique), which manages the Saint-Nazaire shipyards.
After his stint in ministerial cabinets, Alexis Kohler joined the MSC Cruises subsidiary as financial director. While occupying these high positions with the shipowner, he became an active member of Emmanuel Macron’s first presidential campaign. Over this period, the Anticor association, which lodged a complaint three times after the Mediapart revelations, suspects Alexis Kohler of having intervened as an MSC executive in a meeting in Bercy in March 2017 on the takeover of STX France, threatened with bankruptcy. MSC then wanted to enter the capital of the group, but the operation had failed.
One of Anticor’s complaints, filed in August 2018, also concerned the Grand Port maritime du Havre (GPMH), where Alexis Kohler sat on the board of directors from 2010 to 2012 as a state representative, alongside the mayor of Le Havre. Havre, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. Minutes of the 2010 and 2011 supervisory board of the GPMH, published by Mediapart and viewed by franceinfo, reveal that Alexis Kohler spoke and voted in favor of contracts between the GPMH and Terminal Normandie MSC (TNMSC), the French subsidiary of the Italian-Swiss shipowner and a major player in the considerable extension of the port then underway .
Anticor points out in particular that, on September 30, 2011, Alexis Kohler voted, “against the advice of the government commissioner”in favor of extending the presence of TNMSC in the new terminal called “Port 2000”.
Two conflicting police reports
Following Anticor’s complaints, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) opened a preliminary investigation. A dozen people were heard by the Brigade for the repression of economic crime (BRDE), including Alexis Kohler.
These investigations gave rise to two successive contradictory police reports, according to elements of the investigation of which AFP was aware.
In a first 34-page report – described as an intermediary by the PNF – dated June 7, 2019, an investigator writes that Alexis Kohler “takes no steps to organize a formalized deportation”namely not to intervene on matters related to MSC when he works for the Minister of the Economy, Pierre Moscovici, or when he “does not implement any offset” when he is then chief of staff of Emmanuel Macron.
The conclusions of the second report, shorter and dated July 18, 2019, are less severe: the same investigator details as well as the deportations of Alexis Kohler were indeed organized when he worked at Bercy.
In August, the PNF had closed this preliminary investigation without further action, affirming that the analysis of the elements collected “did not (allow) to characterize the offenses initially suspected”. But Anticor obtained the relaunch of the investigations in June 2020 thanks to a complaint with a civil action.
Alexis Kohler “forcefully denies having committed any offence”
As calls to resign multiply in the opposition, Alexis Kohler “strongly denies having committed any offence”writes his lawyer, Eric Dezeuze, in a press release. “Without taking into consideration at this stage the many objective exculpatory elements, Alexis Kohler was placed under the status of indicted for illegal taking of interest for facts that may date back more than ten years”explains his advice, saying that “the rest of the procedure, to which he now has access” was going to “allow him to demonstrate his innocence”.
Emmanuel Macron had himself taken up the pen in July 2019 in favor of Alexis Kohler by sending, via his lawyer, a “personal note” to the PNF. The Head of State assured that his collaborator had never intervened, when he was his chief of staff at Bercy, in files linked to the Italian-Swiss shipowner MSC.
“Insofar as the highest civil servant of the State is indicted for illegal taking of interests, the question which now arises is that of his resignation”believes for his part the lawyer of Anticor, Jean-Baptiste Soufron, evoking a “huge work, serious and thorough” instructor judges.