When on October 13th this year the prosecution authorities announced that they were no longer pursuing a preliminary investigation into his financial background, Richard Ferrand, an MP and close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, was quick to celebrate the news. “I've always insisted that I did nothing illegal or immoral: the justice system has acknowledged this,” he declared. But the prosecutor in Brest in the west of France awarded no prizes for morality to the former socialist MP who became one of Macron's close allies and is now head of the Parliamentary group of the president's party La République en Marche (LREM). Apart from the fact that this is not the prosecutor's job, it would have been hard to have done so anyway.
For Mediapart has examined the report of the preliminary investigation, which was carried out by the inter-regional police force based at Rennes in western France, the Direction Interrégionale de la Police Judiciaire [DRPJ]. And it shows that Richard Ferrand was personally involved in the property deal signed by his partner with the not-for-profit mutual health company Mutuelles de Bretagne of which he was managing director at the time. As the weekly investigation newspaper that broke the story, Le Canard Enchaîné, revealed, Ferrand's companion Sandrine Doucen had the “foresight” to buy a building via a property company in 2011 which on the very same day of the purchase was then let out to Mutuelles de Bretagne. And this without all the directors of that mutual health company being aware at the time that she was their managing director's partner.
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“There's clearly an ethical problem” one of Richard Ferrand's former deputies at the mutual firm told police officers. “Taking account of my functions I should at the very least have been informed of this arrangement....which doesn't correspond to the idea that I have of mutuality.” In his evidence even the former external auditor for Mutuelles de Bretagne noted: “If I'd been informed of that, it goes without saying that I would have looked more deeply at the official version.”
Anti-corruption organisations ANTICOR and FRICC still consider that an offence may have been committed and are now calling for an independent judge to investigate further. Meanwhile Mediapart has looked in detail at the case and analysed it step by step. When looked at it from this perspective it can be seen that while Richard Ferrand may not indeed have worked against the interests of Mutuelles de Bretagne, he did in parallel look after the interests of his partner, in what was a complete blurring of roles.
The price. On this issue there is nothing to say. The rent paid by the Mutuelles de Bretagne to Sandrine Doucen's property company (350 euros a month for 380sq.m. of floorspace in rue George-Sand in the centre of Brest) “conformed to the market price” write the police in their report, having checked this with the housing development agency the Agence d’Urbanisme de Brest-Bretagne. When Richard Ferrand was questioned over the affair in July 2017 he told police: “The interests of the [health mutual] were not given away.” So in the absence of any harm or damage being caused the prosecutor eliminated offences of “fraud” and “breach of trust” from consideration, especially as the building concerned did meet the needs of the Mutuelles de Bretagne, which based its home help service there.
However, one estate agent in Brest told police: “The profit margin [for Sandrine Doucen] is a very sizeable one of the order of 10.5 percent”, whereas the standard profit level for this type of property was “closer to 9 percent”. In simple terms, Richard Ferrand's partner had made a very good investment through the property company. So how was the decision by Mutuelles de Bretagne to rent that particular location place taken?
The decision. Although three offers were on the table, the health mutual's board of directors voted unanimously on January 25th, 2011, in favour of the premises located at rue George-Sand. But in doing so the administrators had followed the advice given two weeks earlier by a meeting of the mutual's management council, a much smaller body. Did Richard Ferrand take part in that meeting? Had he spoken? “I don't remember,” said Ferrand himself. Did all the directors on the board at least know that his partner was behind the property company renting out the premises? “I told them at the end of the [building] works,” Ferrand told the police. “I never hid anything at all.” Yet out of the nine directors and three staff present, only four confirmed to the police that they had been informed of this “detail”.
“I'd certainly have remembered it,” said one director in his evidence. “It's slightly shocking.” Another said: “I was unaware of all that until the publication of articles in the press.” As for the president of the Mutuelles de Bretagne at the time, Michel Buriens, he said he had learnt about the connection “in passing during an informal discussion at the end of 2013 or the beginning of 2014”. He added: “I fell off my chair. I do think that Mr Ferrand could have told me.”
Indeed, on July 1st, 2011, when Michel Buriens went to the notary to sign the lease on behalf of Mutuelles de Bretagne he was accompanied by Richard Ferrand. But nothing was said about the matter. Michel Buriens did not even meet Sandrine Doucen then. On that day Ms Doucen, a lawyer, signed both the the final purchase contract on the property and the lease with the health mutual.
The purchase. Another question occupied the interest of detectives: who was it who recommended to Sandrine Doucen that she should buy the property in the first place? Officially it was not her partner Richard Ferrand but the notary later involved in the transaction, a personal friend, who convinced her to invest in the site, visited it and advised her to base her law practice there. Perhaps surprisingly Sandrine Doucen said in her evidence that she had “not visited” the building before buying it. Nor had she visited any other property ether.
Her partner Richard Ferrand, on the other hand, said that he had visited the site in the autumn of 2010 with his deputy and a technical expert. It was “afterwards” - and only afterwards he said – that Ferrand discovered that the notary had “suggested to my partner that she buy it”. Sandrine Doucen told the police: “The connection between the two projects [editor's note, her purchase of the property and its letting to Mutuelles de Bretagne] was made by [the notary].”
In fact, the notary does not appear to have been greatly involved in the transaction. When, for example, in December 2010 a preliminary purchase contract had to be signed urgently so the property could be 'reserved', it was Richard Ferrand who dealt with it. “[The notary] called me because my partner was not available,” he told the police. He added: “I found the transaction a bit strange.” On that day a belt-and-braces clause was added on Sandrine Doucen's behalf which made it a condition of her final purchase the “conclusion of a commercial lease” between her property company and Mutuelles de Bretagne.
The financing. The police in the end discovered that Richard Ferrand had personally negotiated with the bank Crédit Agricole for the 375,000-euro loan which his partner needed to buy the property. The date of his first meeting with the bank was exactly one week after the Mutuelles de Bretagne's management committee decided to accept Sandrine Doucen's lease offer. “[Mr Ferrand] told me that the tenant envisaged was Mutuelles de Bretagne,” confirmed the bank official with whom he dealt. “I always dealt with Mr Richard Ferrand, either in person or on the phone.” The only exception was for the final signatures.
So it is clear that Richard Ferrand handled his partner's property transaction from A to Y. Two names are needed to create the kind of property company used – known in French as a Société Civile Immobilière or SCI – and it was a childhood friend of Richard Ferrand who was the other person in the SCI, taking a stake of just 1%. “I didn't know the exact project that was being targeted,” that friend later told police.
The aftermath. We know that, faced with these circumstances, the prosecutor in Brest considered that no crime had been sufficiently identified. But the prosecutor was nonetheless still looking at the offence of “collusion”. Under France's criminal law code this is defined as: “For a person tasked with public service work, the fact of ….taking, receiving or keeping, directly or indirectly, any interest in a transaction which, at the time of the action, that person had a full or partial role in ensuring its monitoring, administration or payment.”
The key question in this case is whether the Mutuelles de Bretagne carried out public service work under the terms of the criminal code. Though the not-for-profit organisation does receive millions of euros in public funds each year, Richard Ferrand explained in minute detail when questioned that none of its services – home care, eye care and dental for example – were subject to a “public service” contractual agreement. He also pointed out that “no public entity is on the board of directors, nor interferes with the organisation and functioning of the services”.
For the couple, this was a key point. “If I'd had any concern that Mutuelles de Bretagne exercised public service work I wouldn't have done a deal with them,” Sandrine Doucen told police. However, the couple were not 100% convincing. “The analysis of all the information [from the preliminary investigation] and the jurisprudence does not enable a conclusion to be reached with certainty,” wrote the prosecutor in his press statement on October 13th.
The prosecutor said that to dig deeper they could have considered opening a “judicial investigation”. But the reason an independent judge was not asked to look into those details was that under the laws of limitations it was by then too late to investigate the affair. For these types of offences there is a three-year limitation period after the committing of the alleged offence in which proceedings can be started, and Richard Ferrand had quit his position as director general of Mutuelles de Bretagne in 2012.
However it is possible that the anti-corruption body ANTICO, a body accredited by France's Ministry of Justice, could pursue the issue of “collusion” and depose a formal legal complaint as a civil party to the proceedings before judges in Brest. This would automatically mean the case would be referred to a judge. “We're considering it,” said ANTICOR's president Jean-Christophe Picard who said they were “not satisfied” with the case being dropped.
The anti-corruption organisation apparently has a strategy in mind. This would be to convince a judge that the “collusion” here would be covered by one of the so-called “hidden” offences for which the limitation period for proceedings only starts running from the point at which they were discovered. This is the case with such offences as abuse of trust and misuse of company assets. As that is not currently the law, ANTICOR would have to take the issue to the highest appeal court, the Cour de Cassation. But the organisation thinks that it has gleaned enough information in this case to show there was a desire to “conceal”.
A second organisation, called FRICC – 'fric' is a French slang word for money, equivalent to 'dough' or 'dosh' – is also considering a formal compliant, one which could in particular be brought by members of the mutual society, for causing an “impediment to the inspection of accounts by auditors”. In 2011 the code on mutual societies in effect obliged all “salaried officers” to inform external auditors of any “agreement” in which they were “indirectly interested”. Richard Ferrand did not do that in this case. His defence is that he was not a “salaried officer”.
Nonetheless, in the witness statement he gave to the police the external auditor at the time said: “If I'd been informed [of the personal link between Richard Ferrand and the owner of the property company] it goes without saying that I would have looked more deeply at the official version to know precisely whether this transaction should have been the object of a regulated agreement”, to be validated by them. “If Mr Ferrand had been held shares in the SCI the response would have been easier … in the present case it's difficult to say ...” he added. The prosecutor simply stated: “No breach of the Code on Mutuality has been established.”
At the end of his questioning, Richard Ferrand's final words were: “The calumnious publishings in the press have deeply affected my family life … It's a violation of my partner's life, one which has been stage-managed based on scraps and in a dishonest way.” It should be noted that the publication that broke the original story, Le Canard Enchaîné, has also revealed that in her capacity as a lawyer Sandrine Doucen had provided services to the Mutuelles de Bretagne for many years, at least until last summer, for around 30,000 euros a year. Between 2001 and 2004 she was even hired as director of human resources in a contract signed by Richard Ferrand. “I didn't know that,” the president of Mutuelles de Bretagne at the time said when questioned by police. “I was supposed to be informed of the hiring of executives and heads of services by the managing director. In the current case I wasn't.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter.