A search is underway at the home of prefect Christian Gravel, former head of the interministerial committee for the prevention of delinquency and radicalization, responsible for the controversial allocation of grants from the Marianne fund against “separatism”, learned France Télévisions and franceinfo from sympathetic sources, Tuesday, June 13.
These searches “Intervene in the context of the judicial information opened on May 4, 2023 on the counts of ’embezzlement of public funds’, ’embezzlement of public funds by negligence’, ‘breach of trust’ and ‘illegal taking of interests’ relating to the management of the Marianne fund”, specifies a judicial source to franceinfo. Follow our live.
Other searches in progress. The homes of Mohamed Sifaoui and Cyril Karunagaran, the two leaders of the USEPPM, the association having received the most subsidies, were also searched on Tuesday morning.
A damning report. Endowed at its launch with 2.5 million euros, the fund was set up in April 2021, after the assassination of Samuel Paty, and aimed to finance associations defending “the values of the Republic” by providing, on social networks, “counter-discourses” to radical Islam. But a report by the general inspection of the administration had denounced, at the beginning of June, many “failures” of the association, both in the application process and then in the use of funds.
Resignation of Christian Gravel. After the report, Christian Gravel, who until then was the boss of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and Radicalization (CIPDR), the structure responsible for managing this fund at the Ministry of the Interior, resigned.