It was a DEA memoir that made a lot of noise in 1996, before falling into oblivion. In September of that year, Micheline Mehanna, a student in political sociology at the University of Paris I, supported her work entitled The mode of production of Le Canard Enchaîné, a microsociological approach 1994-1995. This dissertation, in which the student mentions in particular “misogyny” from some to Duckstrongly displeased the management, which would have done everything to avoid its defense, as Karl Laske and Laurent Valdiguié tell us in The real duckpublished by Editions Stock in 2008. Michel Gaillard, then director of the weekly, judges the memoir of Micheline Mehanna “disloyal in its elaboration, biased in its approach and fallacious in its content”.
But by plunging back into this document, a passage calls out. It concerns André Escaro, the former cartoonist whose companion is now suspected of having held an allegedly fictitious job at the newspaper from 1996 to 2020.He [André Escaco] has a special status wrote Micheline Mehanna. He does not undergo the drawing selection system and mode in the same way as other draftsmen. He is also a director of Le Canard Enchaîné. (…) The silence of which he is the object is interesting to underline.
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Twenty six years later, the former employees of the Chained Duck wonder if indeed, André Escaro did not benefit from a “special status”. The 94-year-old cartoonist was a pillar of the newspaper, where he entered in 1949. Until a few months ago, he illustrated the famous “Mare aux Canards”, the section on the second page which is full of anecdotes policies. His little sketches, called “cabochons”, are instantly recognizable. The latest were published in May, just after the complaint against X filed by his colleague Christophe Nobili.
Christophe Nobili is one of the great signatures of the Duck. It was he who revealed, with Hervé Liffran and Isabelle Barré, the Pénélope Fillon affair. On May 10, under the status of whistleblower, he filed a complaint against X because he discovered that André Escaro’s partner, Edith V, would have been paid by Duck from 1996 to 2020, without having worked there. The figures circulating in the editorial staff make you dizzy: three million euros in salaries, including the charges, would have been paid. The Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investigation before the summer for “abuse of corporate assets” and “concealment of abuse of corporate assets”. Several employees, current or retired, have already been heard.
In a text published on August 31, the newspaper’s administration committee (which includes Nicolas Brimo and Michel Gaillard, respectively director of publication and president of the publishing company), denies having had recourse to a fictitious job. He claims that André Escaro and his partner, who is 20 years younger than him, “worked in pairs”.
A line of defense that makes you cough internally. “I must have seen her ten times in my life”explains Kerleroux, 86, one of the designers still active in the Chained Duckwhere he entered in 1972. “I didn’t see her play a role in the newspaper. She never claimed to be. She sometimes came to the bar at the Normandy Hotel, located just opposite the Duck, to wait for her companion.” Kerleroux specifies that at the time, he thought that André Escaro had obtained for Edith V. “a press card so she could work elsewhere. I had no idea it was at Le Canard! I thought it was a gift, a form of abuse of influence, but that’s it”.
André Rollin, the historical literary chronicler of the Duckwhere he practiced between June 1980 and 2015 affirms “to suspect something”. “We knew the editorial staff that there was a wolf”, he tells us in a Parisian café where he has his habits. “There was a kind of cloud, a secret heaviness around André Escaro”, he continues. It either “didn’t see Edith at the newspaper”. “Escaro drew alone. Maybe she gave him two or three ideas, but if we had to pay everyone in a couple who gives ideas to their spouse, it would be absurd.”
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André Rollin considers this to be a job “clearly fictional”. He also told the police officer of the financial brigade who came to hear him this summer. “I think it’s an arrangement, a scheme between friends”, he says. Escaro had been there for a very long time. He earned a very good living. He certainly has a very nice retirement, continues the former literary critic. So why give him extra money? Perhaps because Escaro has a large property portfolio to maintain. Internally we said ‘Cadet Rousselle has three houses, Escaro has three castles’.”
“Escaro had great financial needs”adds a former editorial secretary, retired ten years ago and who wishes to remain anonymous. “He has a castle in Normandy and a property where he produces olive oil in Drôme, he says. He also owned at that time part of a private mansion in the Marais where he had the Trintignant couple as a neighbor. He is as precise as to his knowledge, “Edith V. was not doing any actual work. We were more or less aware that she was on our shelves, but not that she was being paid.” This former editorial secretary was interviewed by the financial brigade last July. He would like to tell us that the Escaro affair is part of a “bygone era”. “In those years, the Duck had huge financial resources. The mistresses were received, welcomed. All that is over.”
A renowned cartoonist from the newspaper, still active, also says he is convinced “that Edith V. never worked at Le Canard. I never saw her”. He tells this story: “Five or six years ago, when renewing press cards, a colleague told me ‘well, it’s funny, there’s an Edith DM on the list of journalists, I don’t know who it’ is, it must be a freelancer.'” The chained Duck indeed employs many occasional collaborators. The designer only understood who it was very recently, when the complaint for “abuse of corporate assets” was made public: DM was in fact the name of the first husband of Edith V., a surname that she retained it for many years before reverting to her maiden name.
One of the only old Duck to remember having had “discussions” with Edith V. is Jean-Yves Viollier, editor from 1997 to 2012. “She called me regularly on Tuesdays to find out if I had received André Escaro’s drawings by fax. But her role ended there.” Jean-Yves Viollier believes that there has been “cheating” from the management of Duck. “My feeling, he explains, it is that Michel Gaillard, who was director of the Duck in 1996, wanted in fact to draw aside André Escaro. Escaro had a lot of power at that time. But Gaillard wanted to bring up Nicolas Brimo and push Escaro to retire. In return, he had to offer Escaro to pay his companion.” André Escaro effectively retired in 1996 but continued to draw for the newspaper.
When questioned, André Escaro did not wish to answer the questions of the investigation unit of Radio France, neither on the reality of the work of his companion, nor on his relations with the management of the Chained Duck. He refers us to the text published by the newspaper on August 31 which, according to him, “explain everything“. In this article, the administration committee of the newspaper denies any fictitious employment. Edith V. would have joined the staff to “support André Escaro and give him a bit of a job. Edith was hired to back up André, who obviously didn’t get a penny anymore”can we read (see article below).
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To our colleagues from Médiapart, Edit V. claimed to have worked with his companion “always”. “We exchanged ideas about events and politics. We worked together (…). Either way, we have a clear conscience and we don’t feel like we’ve robbed anyone.” Edith V., however, specifies to Médiapart that she had not signed an employment contract with La Canard Enchaîné. “This is where the problem lies”she acknowledges, while judging that there is “a campaign behind all this to destabilize the newspaper”.
Nicolas Brimo, the publication director of Duckalso declined to answer our questions. “I will not speak to you until I have been heard by the police”, he justifies himself. Nicolas Brimo explains that he has “not yet been auditioned by the financial brigade”.
We tracked down VM, who was the accountant for the Chained Duck between 1972 and her retirement in 2005. Visibly embarrassed by our questions, she replied: “I don’t want to get into this business. For me, it’s very complicated. I can’t say anything more.”
In the meantime, a draftsman from Duck describes the “sad” atmosphere that reigns at 173 rue Saint-Honoré, at the newspaper’s headquarters. “The writing is divided in two. We are waiting to see what the investigation will givehe said. And we wonder if the police will discover anything else.”