The government minister Marlène Schiappa is facing growing political pressure over a fund she set up following the murder of teacher Samuel Paty in October 2020. Marlène Schiappa, who was the minister for citizenship at the time, said the Fonds Marianne would use up to 2.5 million euros of public money to “defend Republican values” and fight against “separatism”, particularly online.
In all, some 17 associations have benefited from grants totalling just over two million euros from the foundation. However, subsequent media investigations, including by Mediapart, have raised questions over how two of the associations used the funds they received, and over the role of some of the minister's advisors.
Documents sent by the Ministry of the Interior to the French Senate now appear to corroborate these revelations. Claude Raynal, the socialist chair of the Senate finance committee and the senator who asked the ministry for the documents, says he has now obtained “lots of facts” about the affair. Among other things, these documents confirm that three of the former citizenship minister's own advisors sat on the panel that approved the fund's grants, as revealed by Mediapart.
The two associations whose grants from the Fonds Marianne have sparked questions are the Union des Sociétés d’Éducation Physique et de Préparation Militaire (USEPPM), which received 355,000 euros, the biggest single grant from the foundation, and Reconstruire le Commun.
The grant to USEPPM, a charity which dates from the end of the 19th century, was the focus of an investigation by France 2 television and Marianne magazine, which revealed that the organisation used part of the funds to pay the salaries of two administrators, including the controversial journalist Mohamed Sifaoui.
The scale of the income received by the charity also seemed disproportionate to the impact of the work it carried out, the exact nature of which still remain vague. Some of the money was reportedly used for videos and social media posts that were seen by fewer than 50 people each.
“The USEPPM association (355,000 euros) has not reported on its actions to the CIPDR [editor's note, the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Crime and Radicalisation, attached to the Ministry of the Interior, and part of whose role is to coordinate the “fight against Islamism and the prevention of radicalisation”] and has not responded to various requests. An inspection into its activities began in March 2023, which seems late to me,” said Claude Raynal.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The other association at the heart of the revelations, Reconstruire le Commun, which received the second largest grant of 330,000 euros, was set up in October 2020, just days after Samuel Paty's murder. And it was formally registered with the local prefecture just two months before the Fonds Marianne launched its appeal for grant recipients in April 2021.
The issue over this charity concerns some of the videos that it produced with the public money from the foundation. The association posted videos of a political nature, attacking political opponents of Emmanuel Macron during the presidential and legislative elections in 2022. These videos also regurgitate government rhetoric, repeating the suggestion that the political landscape in France is now divided into the camp of “reason” - Macron supporters – and the camp of “extremes”, into which it lumps both the unified Left and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN).
“The account of the exchanges between the CIPDR and the association show numerous alerts over what it produced, revealing problematic elements of political content,” Claude Raynal said after examining the documents. Meanwhile Marlène Schiappa, who is now minister for the social economy, solidarity and charities, has said on Twitter that “the management administering the Fonds Marianne did its duty by not approving certain content”. This suggests that the videos that were posted had also been submitted for authorisation before they were broadcast.
Graffiti on a mosque; a former hostage denigrated online
The profile of those involved with the Reconstruction le Commun videos also raises concerns. Aside from the presenter of several of the association's broadcasts, who had been in charge of Emmanuel Macron's youth wing Les Jeunes avec Macron in 2017, two others involved have backgrounds that pose questions. One of them took part in online denigration of the journalist Nicolas Hénin, the former hostage of Islamic State, who was the victim of a campaign of cyber-bullying, in particular for criticising some of the stances adopted by the far right. In February 2019 this particular individual accused Nicolas Hénin – without naming him directly – of “very subtlety disseminating” Islamic State's “propaganda” via the media.
“His Tweet was added to the judicial investigation into my cyber-bullying but he never faced proceedings because there was such a mass of Tweets that only a few people were tried,” Nicolas Hénin told Mediapart. The former hostage said he was “very shocked” to discover the man's involvement in Reconstruire le Commun. He said this “said a lot about the type of profile, a troll from social media, that was recruited” to help implement the Fonds Marianne project.
The author of that Tweet said that he “sincerely sorry about the cyber-bullying of which Nicolas Hénin was a victim” but insisted he had not been part of it. He told Mediapart that his Tweet, which he acknowledged could certainly be seen as “brutal”, was in response to a previous message from the journalist, and he had not attacked him personally.
The second member of Reconstruire le Commun whose background raises questions was caught red-handed while daubing graffiti on fencing around the mosque at Pantin in the northern suburbs of Paris. This place of worship was targeted on the night of October 29th 2020, thirteen days after teacher Samuel Paty was murdered by a terrorist. The words “Teacher killer mosque”, “Justice for Samuel Paty” and “Je suis Charlie” - the slogan adopted after the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2015 – was daubed in white spray paint on the fence around the mosque. The mosque itself had been closed for six months by an administrative order from the Ministry of the Interior for having posted a video attacking Samuel Paty's lessons.
The graffiti at the Pantin mosque was part of a pattern of Islamophobic incidents that followed the teacher's decapitation. At the time the socialist mayor of Pantin, Bertrand Kern, attacked what he called an “unacceptable” act and made an appeal for people to “stay united, calm and determined”. The mayor also stated that “those who wrote these words dishonour the memory of Samuel Paty and all victims of Islamism, by considering that all Muslims are guilty”.
'I regret the act'
The person in charge of the mosque at Pantin, M'hammed Henniche, who was later forced to resign for having posted the video message that criticised Samuel Paty before his murder on the mosque's Facebook page, had also said it was “disappointing to see youths dragged into a chain of events that are much bigger than them”.
“I'd already become vulnerable as a result of the two lockdowns and I was overcome with deep sadness and anger after Samuel Paty's murder,” the woman who wrote graffiti on the mosque told Mediapart. “The fact that there had been an intrigue against this teacher upset me a lot. I regret the act, it was idiotic, but not the initial intention, which was to attack Islamism as well as to distinguish between the latter and Islam, which is simply the religion of many of our fellow citizens which can, with the right will, absolutely be compatible with the laws of the French Republic.” She added: “The graffiti wasn't on the walls of the mosque, just on the entrance gate and the paint was cleaned off very quickly. The other members of the association are not aware and when they are they'll certainly be mad at me.”
So far no one has been convicted in relation to the graffiti attack; an initial guilty plea hearing scheduled in March 2021 was adjourned.
Meanwhile, the senator Claude Raynal is to formally demand a Parliamentary committee inquiry into the affair, with, he says, two key questions needing answers. One is: “Why did the [grant awards] committee choose these associations, one just created, the other with no competence in this domain, for such funding?” The other is: “What were the respective roles of the CIPDR and the minister's office in these decisions?”
The affair has also been referred to the prosecution authorities in Paris by opposition politicians and the CIPDR itself.
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English version and additional reporting by Michael Streeter
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