For Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right Front National (FN), he is an embarrassing old friend. Frédéric Chatillon, aged 44, the former head of the extreme-right Groupe union défense (GUD) (1) and a service provider for Le Pen's presidential election campaign earlier this year, was investigated for more than twelve months by the fraud squad over his business dealings with Syria.
The inquiry was closed in April without leading to legal action. But it revealed payments made by the Syrian regime to the company owned by Chatillon that also ran the communications side of Le Pen's campaign. These investigations were kept secret both by the state prosecution service and those who they were investigating. The president of the FN did not herself make public any information on the probe, even though Frédéric Chatillon says he told her about it in July 2011.
The investigation started after a tip-off from Tracfin, the anti-money laundering unit of the French finance ministry. It targeted a number of communication and security companies operating around the Riwal group– run by Frédéric Chatillon – and Vendôme Sécurité, a company run by Axel Lousteau, another FN service provider.
It was the amount of money coming from the Crédit lyonnais bank account of the Syrian Embassy in Paris that apparently first raised suspicions. In recent years communications firm Riwal has picked up between 100,000 euros and 150,000 euros annually from representing Syria. Officially the communications and marketing work has concerned the Syrian ministry of tourism and promoting the country. In particular Frédéric Chatillon organised the visit of the Syrian minister of tourism Saadallah Agha al-Qalaa to Paris in 2008. But Riwal has also opened an office in Damascus to help companies and Syrian institutions looking to set up in France.
Frédéric Chatillon, a “revolutionary nationalist” who has long been close to the Syrian Ba'ath party and who ran a revisionist bookshop in Paris called Ogmios, knows Marine Le Pen from university. He has remained close to the neo-fascist movement in Europe and can been spotted at Le Pen's political meetings and on her trips. Chatillon is also married to Marie d'Herbais, a childhood friend of Marine Le Pen, who works in the FN communications department and who was a party candidate in June's parliamentary elections in the Sarthe department in the Pays de la Loire region.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Chatillon himself believes that the investigation was linked to his political connections. “The police officer told me 'it's Tracfin',” Chatillon told Mediapart, referring to how the investigation into him seemingly began after an alert from the anti-money laundering unit. “But in general it's the banks who alert Tracfin, yet my bank assured me that it was not them. Tracfin is the catch-all for the system. I don't know if it was [former president Nicolas] Sarkozy or the French state but in any case, it was political.”
He added: “When Marine took over the Front (2) they investigated for six months, they collected everything on me. Once they had everything they called me in. Because of the buzz around Marine's campaign (3) they were looking for things. Even they themselves didn't know what they were looking for.”
Frédéric Chatillon says that he warned Marine Le Pen of the start and the completion of the investigation because “it was sensitive”. He said: “She asked me what it was about, if I was in the clear, if I had done anything wrong. I said no, I have no financial holdings, I have nothing. They checked everything, they asked me questions about my bills and the large cheques I had received. I have no illegal transactions.”
The investigations into Chatillon's business dealings began initially in December 2010, following a complaint. A second inquiry was launched after Tracfin's warnings to the prosecution authorities in July 2011. The Syrian dealings were at the centre of the suspicions. “Syria is a client,” Chatillon says. “What I received from the ministry of tourism was never a gift from the regime. It's public relations. I have videos for all the marketing and communications work I've done as proof, and order forms and bills for all I've done. My services were paid for by bank transfer from the Syrian embassy in France, and via a French bank. This is not about money coming into France via Syria or Libya,” he said.
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1: The GUD is a far-right student group first formed in 1968 which has been dissolved on a regular basis, only to re-appear under different names.
2: Marine Le Pen became president of the FN on January 16th, 2011, taking over from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen.
3: In 2007 the FN had been trounced in the presidential election, part of Nicolas Sarkozy's successful attempt to unite the Right behind his candidacy for the presidency. In 2011 and 2012 the opinion polls showed that under Marine Le Pen the FN was performing more strongly and represented an electoral threat on the right of the political spectrum. In the event Le Pen did even better than predicted by polls, coming third in the first round of voting with 17.9% of the vote – the highest score achieved by the far right in a presidential election.
'Marine Le Pen trusts me'
Riwal's business dealings in Syria were not always so easy at the beginning as, according to Chatillon, the regime “doesn’t pay on account” (1) meaning that few companies are interested in the market there. He says himself he was nearly left high and dry at the end of 2010 by a late payment.
According to Chatillon his firm's work in Syria had “no political dimension”. In March 2008 when he accompanied his “mate” the controversial comedian and actor Dieudonné on his tour to Damascus he was, however, seen in the company of a number of Syrian dignitaries. These included Manaf Tlass, son of the former defence minister, a general himself and childhood friend of Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, and who recently defected to France.
“I have excellent contacts with the Tlass family, the father first and the children today. Manaf remains a friend, we saw each other recently in Paris,” he says.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
He claims to have “friends on both sides” in the Syrian conflict but in 2011 he sponsored the creation of the pro-regime website Infosyrie.fr. At the same time on the Facebook page of We are Syria he attacked “the Zionist lobby (who control the French press)” that “dreams of destabilising your magnificent country”. He added: “All those who take part directly or indirectly in these demonstrations are accomplices of this lobby group.” In October 2011, in a period of increased repression, Chatillon can be seen at a demonstration in support of the Syrian regime. (See video here in French – relevant footage starts at about 17 seconds in).
However, the fraud squad investigation targeted Chatillon as a close ally of Marine Le Pen every bit as much as in his capacity as a pro-Syrian activist. The investigations opened and ended at two key moments for Marine Le Pen; when she became president of the FN in January 2011 and at the end of the presidential campaign in April 2012. “At the time I wasn't very reassured because I said to myself 'it might be a political-financial conspiracy' over which I'd have no control,” says Chatillon.
However, that did not stop Marine Le Pen calling on Chatillon for his services for her election campaign and signing a new contract with him. His firm Riwal created the candidate's websites, the multi-media applications for smartphones and the printing of leaflets and the manifesto of the official FN campaign.
The related company Vendôme Sécurité meanwhile rented out its guards, up to 200 men, for certain meetings as back-up for the FN's own security outfit the Département protection et sécurité (DPS). Here, too, with the FN, Chatillon at times wondered if he would be left waiting for payment; once when Marine Le Pen feared she would not get the required number of endorsements from elected officials that every presidential candidate needs, and again at the end of the first round of voting on 22nd April. “The banks only lent her money just after the first round,” says Chatillon. For his part the businessman should earn “several hundred thousand euros” from the campaign.
When contacted by Mediapart, the FN's director of communications Alain Vizier said: “I only deal with the Front National. And Mr Chatillon is a supplier, not a close ally. He is not a card-carrying member.”
Yet he is a “supplier” who, thanks to his neo-fascist networks - “from my old life” - organises Marine Le Pen's visits to Italy. As, for example a trip to Rome in October 2011, where he can be seen next to the FN president.
When Marine Le Pen was questioned during her campaign on France Inter radio (see below) about her friend's Syrian friendships, the FN president reacted violently, suggesting that Chatillon was not a friend – as she had told Le Monde newspaper (see link here in French) - but was simply a “service provider” who was completely at liberty to work for the regime “as do large French firms and the government”.
She had probably forgotten the well-watered evening in Paris in February 2003 – the day of Frédéric Chatillon's birthday - when she intervened as her friend was pushing police officers, who had been called by neighbours because of the noise. She was later accused by officers of verbal assault against them.
For his part, Frédéric Chatillon said that they consider themselves “old mates from university” but that he “did not take part in campaign meetings” and “has never been an official adviser”. He added: “We saw each other once a week during the campaign. She trusts me. And I was patient when she wasn't able to pay me.”
Chatillon had no news of the progress of the fraud squad's investigation until February, when he was told they had ended their enquiries. But it was only officially closed by the prosecution in April. “What was quite striking was that all that has left no written trace, no witness transcripts, nothing,” says Chatillon. “It's surreal. It all took place in the strictest possible secrecy.”
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1: Paying a service provider a proportion of their fee in advance, a common practice in France.
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English version: Michael Streeter