French spy agency's concerns over links between far-right Rassemblement National members and Russia

WhileWhile giving evidence to the Parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference in France on February 2nd 2023, the head of the country's domestic intelligence agency Nicolas Lerner insisted: “I repeat, we don't look at political parties.” However, the head of the DGSI went on to say went that over the last four years they had “on occasions suspected that individuals or elected representatives from a party might, at the very least, have been approached by a foreign service”.

At the time Nicolas Lerner did not divulge the names of any elected representative or any party involved. But secret reports from the agency he runs are rather more forthcoming.

On Thursday the French Parliament's intelligence group – the DPR – produced its annual report on the fight against foreign interference in which it was reported that more than 4,000 spies and “agents of influence” were under surveillance in the country. Meanwhile Mediapart can reveal the contents of a DGSI report pointing the finger at four past or present members of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), formerly the Front National.

This report, seen by Mediapart, is dated March 2019. Its subject is the risk of Russian interference in the European elections which were due to take place two months later. The DGSI document stated that “Russia is mobilising its influential intermediaries in France, with the aim of influencing [the result of the vote]”. The intelligence agency was concerned about “soft power” operations but their fears did not stop there. It also worried that these soft power manoeuvres could also be “combined with clandestine actions mobilising other vectors, in particular associations and political agents”.

The report's author did not give further detail of these possible clandestine activities. But they did describe the strategy of using influence to “spread an anti-European, anti-NATO message, which attacks the 'decadence' of globalised Western societies, which present Russia as the only guarantor of conservative 'values'”. According to the author, this Russian strategy would “in classic style” be based on the mobilisation of intermediaries established in the French political landscape and the institutions of the European Union.

First French politician mentioned: Thierry Mariani

The DGSI noted in particular that as the European elections approached, the number of pro-Russian events increased. An example was one organised on January 31st 2019 by the Dialogue Franco-Russe (DFR) association which invited a partner at a commercial law firm established in Russia to come and talk about Europe's sanctions against Russia. The domestic intelligence agency took the opportunity to highlight the fact that the co-chair of Dialogue Franco-Russe since 2012 had been Thierry Mariani a “candidate on the European elections list for Rassemblement National”.

A minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy, Thierry Mariani switched allegiance to Marine Le Pen in 2019 after 42 years in right-wing politics and is known to be pro-Russian. When he spoke to the Parliamentary inquiry into foreign meddling at the start of the year the Member of the European Parliament (MEP) explained that he wanted to restore reality in the face of the “fantasies” and “myths that circulate” about the DFR association. The organisation was set up in 2004 by then president Jacques Chirac and Russian leader Vladimir Putin to “encourage economic and political exchanges with Russia”.

But the far-right MEP is far more than just the co-chair of this body: in particular he is known for making repeated trips to Moscow, to meet Vladimir Putin, but also to the pro-Russian Donbass region of Ukraine to “supervise” elections in 2018 that were judged illegal by the international community.

In a clear allusion to such trips - but without naming Thierry Mariani - DGSI boss Nicolas Lerner had said during his own appearance before the Parliamentary inquiry: “When elected representatives go to the Donbass to supervise electoral activities … it is about a different level of commitment or support for a political ideology. Agreeing to endorse a process that purports to be democratic and transparent amounts to crossing a line in terms of allegiance to the country concerned.”

Contacted by Mediapart, Thierry Mariani mocked a “report from the secret services who have discovered that Dialogue Franco-Russe was pro-Russian...”, based on public information “found on the internet”. He continued: “They won't agree with us, but first of all I became chair of Dialogue Franco-Russe in 2012 when I was still a minister and there were no problems with Russia, and secondly all our activities are transparent and public.”

In recent years the association has been put on hold and no longer has “either offices or major subscriptions” says the former minister. “We simply make videos while waiting for better days.” He said he did not consider himself to be “at war with Russia” and added that all politicians are “agents of influence”. He said: “We follow our ideas. The Russians don't need to use 'soft power' on me! And anyway, what secrets does a Member of Parliament have?”

Press attaché for far-right MEPs 'in contact' with a Russian spy

Three other politicians or officials who are in - or have been - in the RN are also cited in the DGSI secret report, during the second section of the document which deals with “influential intermediaries inside the European Parliament in Strasbourg”.

Though they were on the ball concerning Hungarian and Latvian MEPs known to be “agents of influence for the Russian services”, French domestic intelligence had been slow to pick up on the profile of the ex-RN MEP and former international adviser to Marine Le Pen, Aymeric Chauprade, who according to the DGSI report “attracted particular attention”.

Before leaving the party in 2015, this geopolitical expert placed his Russian contacts at Le Pen's service and facilitated one of the two Russian loans they got in 2014 – the one for two million euros obtained by Marine Le Pen's father Jean-Marie Le Pen – by introducing him to the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

In addition to Chauprade's “pro-Russian activism”, the intelligence agency also mentions a fact that has already been written about but which still raises questions: the recruitment of Elizaveta Peskova as a trainee at the end of 2018. She is the daughter of veteran Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. According to Mediapart's information, the young woman also sent her CV to Thierry Mariani at Dialogue Franco-Russe.

This recruitment by Aymeric Chauprade raised even more questions for the DGSI given that the MEP had previously hired the Russian Tamara Volokhova as a parliamentary assistant from 2014 to 2016. That was a time when Moscow was strongly lobbying in Europe following its annexation of Crimea. This former model, who arrived in Strasbourg at the end of the 2000s and who according to website Rue89 acquired French nationality in 2020, was introduced to Chauprade when she was working for the far-right group at the European Parliament of which French politician and businessman Philippe de Villiers was a member, having previously been a trainee in the Parliament's communications department.

Since 2014 Tamara Volokhova has accompanied several MEPs on trips to Russia and Crimea, and organised several trips by Aymeric Chauprade. These include him going, at Russian expense, to an International Parliamentary Forum in Moscow in 2014, an event designed to bring together conservative groups in Russia and Europe. At the time she was in touch with the office of Alexander Babakov, an advisor to Putin in charge of co-operation with Russian organisations abroad, and an intermediary for the Front National's Russian loan as Mediapart has revealed, and as evidenced by emails.

According to the DGSI Tamara Volokhova was also at the time “in contact with Alexei Kovalski”, who was then a political advisor to the Russian ambassador in Paris, as Mediapart revealed in 2019.

Alexei Kovalski was in the delegation of Russian Parliamentarians invited to the Front National's conference in 2014, the year that the Russian loans were secured. He was also a key player in a plan to twin the National Front stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont in northern France to a Russian town. The French services took the view that his post of political advisor was just a cover for his real job as a spy for the “SVR”, the French foreign intelligence service. In fact, in its report the DGSI did not refer to his official position at the Russian Embassy, and instead preferred to describe him as an “officer in the SVR”.

The French intelligence agency was thus clearly stating in a report that a RN official was meeting a Russian spy. This information is even more important given that Tamara Volokhova has since risen up the echelons of the RN Parliamentary group in Strasbourg, which is called Identité et Démocratie (ID). At the age of 33 she was both the RN MEPs' press attaché and the group's technical advisor on the Parliament's foreign affairs committee. She was also an RN Parliamentary candidate in the Bas-Rhn département or county in 2022 and stood at departmental elections in 2021.

Was Nicolas Lerner thinking of her and Aymeric Chauprade when he told the French Parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference that “several [current and former European Parliamentarians] have clearly had clandestine relations with intelligence services”? When contacted by Mediapart, the DGSI did not respond.

When approached, Tamara Volokhova did not respond to Mediapart's questions. But Jean-Paul Garraud, chair of the RN delegation at the European Parliament, did so on her behalf. The MEP said that the Franco-Russian denied having “contacts” with Alexei Kovalski. “If she has come across him, it's on an ad hoc basis. She has no decision-making power [within the group] and no special relationship that could be seen as spying. She's not a spy. If there was the slightest evidence of this we wouldn't keep her on.”

The MEP said that the party official was the “object of baseless political discrimination” and that “her only fault is to have joint French and Russian nationality”. He attacked her “harassment” by a section of the press and by some MEPs who are worried by the presence of the Franco-Russian in sensitive meetings held as part of the work of the foreign affairs committee.

As revealed by Le Monde, in March 2021 the French MEP Arnaud Danjean of the rightwing Les Républicains (LR), along with the committee's chair David McAllister and Polish MEP Radek Sikorski, wrote to the European Parliament's secretary general expressing concern about whether a verification procedure existed for prospective trainees and employees from third countries. Meanwhile MEP Nathalie Loiseau of France's ruling Renaissance party had sent a letter to the Parliament's president calling for stronger security measures in the workings of the security and defence subcommittee which she chairs.

“Particularly since the war in Ukraine, great attention is being paid to the confidentiality of the European Parliament regarding sensitive issues and there's been a closer look at the nationality of staff who come from countries that are considered to be at high risk (Russia, China, Iran, Qatar),” Nathalie Loiseau told Mediapart. She said that it was “not implausible that Ms Volokhova provoked some questions from members of the committee on foreign affairs”.

'Attempt at intimidation'

Tamara Volokhova thinks that she was excluded from certain meetings during trips, in particular one to the Caucuses in 2022. She started several proceedings against Nathalie Loiseau, who she blamed for “sullying my reputation” in a book published in October 2022 by implying that she might be a Russian agent. These proceedings consist of a complaint made to the European Parliament authorities for “psychological bullying” (which was dismissed in August), a letter to the Parliament's director of human resources, criminal and civil action in Belgium for “psychological bullying, defamation, public insults and reputational damage”, civil action to get the section of the book in question removed, and proceedings with France's data protection watchdog the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL).

Nathalie Loiseau was surprised a few months ago to receive a letter at her Parisian home in which the Franco-Russian asked the MEP to inform her of the “files that I might have in my possession concerning her, otherwise she would go to the CNIL”.

“I was shocked, I wondered how she had got hold of my home address, I didn't respond,” said Nathalie Loiseau. “I received a letter from the CNIL telling me that it had been referred to them.” The MEP said she has been targeted for “having written in my book that which was already in the press and which Ms Volokhova had not previously disputed.” The MEP sees these proceedings as “attempts at intimidation, a desire to silence me over the questions that I have outlined in my book about her nationality, her closeness to the Russian authorities, her role in relations between the RN and the Russian authorities”.

Finally, though in less detail, the DGSI report mentions a fourth French name: that of Nicolas Bay who at the time was a “Rassemblement National elected representative”, who co-chaired the RN group at the European Parliament before joining the rival far-right politician Éric Zemmour in 2022.

While the DGSI takes care not to suggest any illegality – in this report sent to the Élysée, the prime minister's office and senior ministers the agency restricted itself to factual elements that were largely in the public domain – the fact remains that the only four French politicians mentioned in this overview of the risks of Russian interference in the 2019 European elections were all current or former members of the RN.

Questioned about this by Mediapart, Aymeric Chauprade said he was “not at all shocked” that the French intelligence services followed his “(past) activities in Russia or elsewhere”. He said: “The DGSI is doing its job properly when it catalogues the relations of French elected representatives with foreign countries; relations which in my case did not involve any confidential or strategic issues.” However, he did question how “media such as Mediapart can get access to confidential DGSI reports”.

Jean-Paul Garraud, meanwhile, said that if the French intelligence services had been interested in members of Rassemblement National this was “obviously” due to the party's “Russian loan”, which was repaid in September.

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• The original French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter