President Emmanuel Macron's former security aide Alexandre Benalla told police investigators that he had overseen the removal of his personal firearms safe from his home, and he also refused to hand over data from his mobile phone or his partner's telephone number as part of the ongoing investigation into claims he unlawfully took part in the arrest of a protester in Paris, Mediapart can reveal.
As already revealed by the investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaîné and Le Monde, when police officers investigating the affair sought to gain entry to Benalla's flat in a Paris suburb during an attempted search on July 21st they were unable to force the door. The following morning when they returned and gained entry they noticed that the cabinet that was supposed to contain Benalla's weapons was missing.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Had the gun safe been taken away the day before, before their first visit? Or had it been taken away subsequently, despite the presence of police investigation scene tapes around the flat? The investigating judges probing the case sought to get their remit widened so they could examine this issue. But at the beginning of August the Paris prosecutor's office refused to do so.
Yet under French criminal law the “elimination of traces of clues” or the “moving or removal of any objects whatsoever” with the aim of “modifying the state of a scene of crime or offence” is punishable by up to five years in jail. And when he was questioned in custody Alexandre Benalla – who lost his job as President Macron's security aide at the Élysée after video footage showed him dressed in police insignia arresting a man at a MayDay protest earlier this year – the issue of concealed evidence was directly raised by police officers. And Benalla himself seemed to accept responsibility.
“During our operation this morning we did not note the presence of the cabinet containing your weapons at your home, can you tell us where this safe and these weapons are?” asked the officers, according to information seen by Mediapart.
“No idea, it was supposed to be taken to a safe place by someone but it wasn't me who dealt with that,” replied Benalla, 26, a former private bodyguard for Macron during his election campaign who was appointed as a security aide to the newly elected president, and later as deputy to the head of the president's private office. “Given that my home had been identified by journalists, for reasons of security and responsibility I didn't want to leave them in this building. My weapons have been declared, I have nothing to hide, it was simply a security measure. Because the flat was unoccupied after journalists lay siege to it, I was afraid of having the weapons taken,” he told the police.
In other words, the president's former security aide himself claims that he had his gun cabinet taken to a safe place and concealed. And yet the day before he had told investigators: “As far as I am concerned the scale of the search concerning my home is a little excessive but I have nothing to hide.”
Alexandre Benalla had given his agreement in principle to the search of his flat in Issy-les-Moulineaux in the south-west suburbs of Paris but he did not provide the keys. Apparently these had been given to the “person” in charge of making sure his flat was made safe.
“I don't have the keys with me,” Benalla told the police. “The only person who has the keys to my home is my partner, who by this time has for sure gone abroad with our baby to rest and escape the journalists.” Nor did he have the keys to the flat near the Élysée at Quai Branley he used as part of his job and which he was provided with in June. Work on it had finished on July 6th and he said he “had not had the time to keep any personal effects there of many type”. He stated: “It's a residence that's protected by decree, and is considered to be a protected area.” The same was true, he said, of his official telephone which was a “secure telephone, subject to a protected status”.
He also told the officers who wanted to get into his flat in Issy-les-Moulineaux that he would not give them his partner's telephone number either, even though she could have opened the door for them. His partner, he explained, had “nothing to do with this saga”. He continued: “She's already quite shaken and she is alone with a two-month-old baby having had to cancel our wedding and having to put up with her partner's face shown endlessly on TV screens.” As Le Parisien newspaper revealed on August 22nd, the police did finally obtain his partner's phone number, allowing them to geolocate her location. It turned out she was not abroad, but was in the 16th arrondissement or district of Paris.
Alexandre Benalla also said he had concealed the data from his personal mobile phone. It was with this device that he sent a message to President Macron's chief of staff Alexis Kohler last May to warn him that he had been filmed on MayDay in the Place de la Contrescarpe in Paris. “I sent that message with a telephonic device that I had and which I no longer have,” he told officers. “I lost that device but I kept the data from that phone on a USB stick that I intend to pass on but for the moment I don't want to say where it is.” He added: “It's an unsecured personal telephone. I don't want to give some information on this phone.”
This story of the “lost” phone and the data from it does not seem to have concerned the prosecution authorities. The gun cabinet is still missing but Le Parisien reports that Alexandre Benalla recently sent his firearms to the judges. He had a Glock 43 pistol, thanks to authorisation from a prefect or state official, and two other Glocks, a Glock 17 and a Glock 26, with firearm licenses from his membership of a shooting range, plus a 9mm Remington pistol.
'I made a lot of enemies in the administrative and political machinery'
Yet as the hearings held by the commissions of parliamentary inquiry into the affair over the summer made clear, the authorisation given to Benalla for his Glock 42 on October 13th, 2017, only came after two refusals for a permit by the Ministry of the Interior. “The ministry to which I am responsible gave a negative opinion on the request by Mr Benalla to carry a firearm,” said Frédéric Auréal, the head of the personal protection service the SDLP when he was questioned in the French Senate. He said: “I was extremely unfavourable to the fact that a private person, a non-police officer, could be armed, when a protection detail made up of seasoned professionals was present. When the question was raised I stated my complete reluctance. I was followed in this by my minister and the Ministry of the Interior.”
But the head of the French president's private office, Patrick Strzoda, stated that “being directly responsible for the security of the head of state” he considered it necessary to provide Benalla with a service weapon. The authorization was duly signed by the prefect in charge of the Paris police despite the misgivings at the Ministry of the Interior.
It seems that at the Élysée, nothing was denied when it came to Alexandre Benalla. He told police officers that he had become a target because of the position that Emmanuel Macron had given him. “The opportunity of harming the president of the Republic by destroying what might appear to be a weak link in his entourage was too great,” he said. “I've asked myself the question as to what might lie behind the publication of this article [editor's note, the Le Monde article in July that broke the story]. I want to state that in the context of my duties and also through the relationship with the president of the Republic that could be ascribed to me I made a lot of enemies in all levels of the administrative and political machinery.”
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Benalla, who became deputy to the head of the president's private office, even considered that he was paying the price for his involvement in the reform of the head of state's personal protection services. “My rather determined and reforming action, in the areas conferred on me, and I'm thinking in particular of the reform of security at the Élysée where the aim was to integrate the GSPR [editor's note, the Republic's presidential security group] which is entirely dependent on the presidency, caused much animosity in the senior police hierarchy,” he said. “Because I did not come from this professional background, my presence wasn't really appreciated.”
Alexandre Benalla may have referred to himself as a perceived “weak link” but he painted a picture of someone who had wide powers. “I'm in charge of the general organization of the president of the Republic's movements in all aspects: preparation, organisation of the preparation meetings and the trip itself,” he said.
“I am also in charge of the coordination of the [personal] security services inside the Palace, that includes the GSPR and the military command. That also includes the implementation of the reform of the GSPR which was decided on by Mr Macron at my suggestion.” When they spoke to the Parliamentary inquiry commissions senior figures at the Élysée, the head of the president's private office Patrick Strzoda and the commanding military officer at the Élysée, General Éric Bio-Farina, claimed that Benalla was just one participant among others in the working group to reform the personal protection services.
Patrick Strzoda had insisted that Benalla was “sometimes present” at discussion meetings. As for General Bio-Farina, he explained Benalla's presence in meetings “in part because he belonged to the leadership in the [president's] office and we needed that perspective to chart the direction; and in part because in the various areas touching on security, his opinion was, I have to say, quite relevant”.
But Alexandre Benalla told investigators at the end that he was also responsible for private aspects of presidential security. “I was also in charge of the organisation and security aspect in relation to the president's private life and as a consequence of those close to him too,” he said. The Élysée had meanwhile given a toned down version of these tasks too. Colonel Lionel Lavergne, head of the GSPR, claimed that Benalla “took part in the organisation of the president's trips” in the context of his “duties inside the [presidential] office's leadership” ensuring the “coordination of the different services” but that he was not in charge of “the security operation”.
During the search of Alexandre Benalla's office at the Élysée on July 25th, the investigators seized a working document stamped “Confidential – Not to be distributed - Planning version” dated July 5th 2018 and entitled: “Proposals for project of organisational transformation of services”. This note, whose existence was revealed by Le Monde, proposed in an overblown style an “opportunity to set down lasting bases for the presidency of the 21st century” with “managed, modernised and industrialisable services” by “reinforcing the managerial culture of the Palace”. This document, in all likelihood written by Alexandre Benalla, places the leadership team at the presidential office at the heart of the new set up. This would “guarantee the fluidity” of presidential movements and become the “pivotal point of the overall plan”.
In the document we also discover that the new presidential security directorate the DSPR – the Direction de la Sécurité de la Présidence de la République – which is officially still being set up has “made a start on his transformation project … It stands as an autonomous entity and expresses the desire to keep support structures in it by combining operating and operational supports”. Contrary to what senior figures at the Élysée had told the investigations at the National Assembly and Élysée, the process of reforming and integrating the different services had thus “started”. And Alexandre Benalla, who had been director of security for Emmanuel Macron's En Marche! movement, and who was catapulted to the rank of a reservist lieutenant-colonel in the reform plan, was keeping an eye on things.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter