INFO FRANCEINFO. Senior official suspected of conflict of interest with tuna fishing lobby

According to information from franceinfo, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office was seized by the anti-corruption association Anticor, itself alerted by the ocean defense NGO Bloom, about the arrival last April of a senior French civil servant at the head of the Europêche tuna group, a European fishing lobby. Anticor suspects illegal taking of interest.

Administrator of maritime affairs, Anne-France Mattlet was between 2016 and 2020 deputy head of the office of the management of the Directorate of Maritime Fisheries and Aquaculture (DPMA). She was also elected Vice-Chair in 2019 and then Chair in 2020 of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Compliance Committee. Until last March, she exercised important responsibilities as the representative of France within this intergovernmental organization. As such, according to information shared on the LinkedIn professional network, she was responsible for fishing agreements between France and Africa, had to solve their “application problems”, participated in the “drafting of instructions” and ” interministerial coordination” to define France’s negotiating positions. According to Anticor, it therefore has “obviously ensured the surveillance of many tuna companies in order to enforce rules, some of which it allowed to be enacted”.

In her new position, Anne-France Mattlet is thus in charge of the tuna strategy of Europêche, the main lobby of fishing companies in Europe, with as main subjects the question of the revision of the European fishing control system. According to the Anti-Corruption Association, “Ms. Mattlet has negotiated and made decisions applying to private companies in the tuna fishing sector” when she herself was responsible within the DPMA for the negotiation of various regulations regarding tuna fishing.

However, the law imposes on a civil servant a period of at least 3 years before joining an entity in the sector for which he was in charge in his administration. She held this position until the end of February 2020, less than three years before her move to the private sector at Europêche, at the same time requiring an opinion from the military ethics commission. His defector in the private sector was validated by the ethics commission of the Ministry of the Armed Forces. A decree recorded his departure from April 1, 2022. “The procedure was followed and respected and the commission issued a favorable opinion”indicates the Ministry of the Sea. The ethics commission believes that Europêche “carries out missions of general interest”.