Transcripts of a tapped phone conversation in July to which Mediapart has gained access reveal how Brigitte Macron, wife of the French president, told Michèle Marchand, the head of a paparazzi agency who is under investigation for witness tampering and criminal conspiracy in a case related to the suspected Libyan funding of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, that she should “stay firm” and “keep going” following her release from prison.
Brigitte Macron told Marchand, dubbed “the paparazzi queen”, that she had been treated in a “disgusting” way, while the two women also sympathised with Sarkozy over what they called his “terrible” legal woes, which include him currently formally placed under investigation in the Libyan funding probe for “corruption”, “illicit funding of an election campaign”, “receiving misappropriated public funds”, and “criminal conspiracy”.
Marchand, a powerful figure in the French gossip press and an influential PR fixer to politicians, is under investigation for her suspected role in negotiating the retraction of evidence against Sarkozy by businessman Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in the probe into suspected Libyan funding of the former president’s 2007 election campaign.
She denies wrongdoing.
Head of the Paris-based Bestimage paparazzi agency, Marchand, 74, a confidant of Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, and who played an active PR role in Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 election campaign, was jailed in June for breaching her bail conditions by contacting others implicated in the case. The judges leading the investigations into the alleged witness tampering have called it “a case of major gravity”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
It was at precisely 11.27am on July 29th, one week after Marchand’s release, that Brigitte Macron called her using a mobile phone belonging to someone else.
The call to Marchand was tapped by police as part of the investigation into her role in Takieddine’s retraction – suspected of being made against compensation – of his previously detailed accusations that Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign was in part funded with cash by the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and which Takieddine has said he himself helped deliver to Paris. Sarkozy has denied the claims.
Takieddine withdrew his accusations against Sarkozy in a November 2020 interview with French weekly Paris Match, and in a video that was broadcast by French news channel BFMTV. In January, Takieddine, during questioning by French magistrates, withdrew his retraction, and once again maintained that Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign had been funded by Tripoli.
The conversation between the two women began with Marchand, familiarly known as "Mimi", thanking Brigitte Macron for having taken the trouble, via a friend of both women, to ask how she was faring during her time in prison.
The president’s wife explained that it had been, “Impossible to call you, because of the phone obviously.”
“Obviously,” replied Marchand.
“How did you hold out?” asked Brigitte Macron. “It was very tough, very, very tough, Brigitte,” said Marchand. “Yeah, it’s abominable,” added Brigitte Macron.
Marchand explained that she had been given authorisation to use a phone in her prison cell to call her close entourage and her team at Bestimage. “So, fortunately I was able to work, to keep the company going,” she added. “It’s what kept me going, kept up the morale of course.” She said the judge who ordered her detention for breaching her bail conditions had been very troubled at doing so, but that “there were instructions from above”.
“But they did it for what reason? […] So that no-one communicates with you?” asked Brigitte Macron.
“They thought they’d make me crack. But me, I can’t tell them things that don’t exist. […] I didn’t do what I’m accused of. I’m an epiphenomenon in this story,” replied Marchand.
“Well, you must stay firm, […] That you keep going,” replied Brigite Macron.
Marchand then told Brigitte Macron how the witness tampering case had affected the entourage of Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, with who she had constantly been in contact during the operation mounted around Takieddine’s retraction.
Marchand’s comment prompted the French president’s wife to denounce the workings of the French justice system in the multiple corruption cases in which Sarkozy has been mired.
Contacted by Mediapart, Brigitte Macron’s office issued a statement in which it “formerly contested [the suggestion] that Madame Macron made the slightest commentary about the treatment of Madame Marchand by the judges, nor about the judicial fate of Monsieur Sarkozy”.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
However, the police transcript of the conversation between the two women, as follows, contradicts that account.
Michèle Marchand: — “It gives me a great deal of sorrow, if you like, for Carla, who every day…Because she…I have the right to speak with her. So she calls me, she sends me text messages – ‘My Mimi, I am so sad’.”
Brigitte Macron: — “Ah, yes, she was sad…”
Michèle Marchand: — “Well yes.”
Brigitte Macron: — “Because I lunched with her a month ago, or a month and a half […] Together we said it was disgusting.”
Michèle Marchand: — “All that, it’s against Sarko [Sarkozy]. At some point, it’s going to have to end, all the same. I don’t know. You see.”
Brigitte Macron: — “But he, he told me that since the Outreau case, they decided to have his hide.”
Michèle Marchand. — “Oh, yes, that’s certain.”
Brigitte Macron. — “As of the Outreau case, he said that [the system of] the examining magistrate should be abolished. On one occasion, he told me. And as of that moment, he told me, ‘They decided to have my hide’.”
Michèle Marchand: — “That’s terrible.”
Brigitte Macron: — “It has been terrible. I don’t even know how he keeps going.”
Michèle Marchand: — “Ah yes. Ah, I don’t know, I promise you.”
Brigitte Macron: — “He’s had to manage through that for a hell of a long time […] I don’t know how he does it.”
That exchange about Sarkozy comes within a current political context in which Emmanuel Macron’s justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, is currently under formal investigation for having used the disciplinary powers of his ministry in order to weaken the position of anti-corruption magistrates shortly before one of the several trials of Sarkozy.
Later in their conversation, Brigitte Macron offers Marchand the help of her security officer.
Brigitte Macron: — “So, it’s to tell you that if you get bother, and that things…It’s Fabien who…”
Michèle Marchand: — “Understood. OK, understood.”
Brigitte Macron: — “You let him know.”
Michèle Marchand: — “If there’s anything at all, I’ll call Fabien.”
“It’s Fabien who’ll get put in the nick,” jokes Brigitte Macron. Marchand reassures her: “But I’m not prohibited from speaking either to you or to Emmanuel.”
The arrival of “Fabien” as Brigitte Macron's security officer was made public in a report in French gossip magazine Gala in March 2021, featuring a photo provided by Marchand’s agency Bestimage below the headline: “Brigitte Macron: her security agent (very good-looker) causes jealousy”.
Gala commented that the appointment of the 44-year-old gendarme to the presidential office, the Élysée Palace, in 2017 “will cause jealousy among some of his colleagues” because, said the magazine, he had “very quickly mounted in grade, climbing from simple warrant officer to lieutenant three years later.” He has seen service in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Contacted by Mediapart, Brigitte Macron’s personal cabinet director, Pierre-Olivier Costa, said: “I formally deny that Madame Macron proposed to Madame Marchand the least security service.”
At the end of her July conversation with Marchand, Brigitte Macron told her: “Try to get over all that, because it’s really hard.”
“Kiss the boss,” Marchand said, referring to Emmanuel Macron, “and kiss the kids […] Well, kisses to everyone. Thanks, my Brigitte. Thanks. Kisses.”
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse
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