An 8-million-euro loan which saved the far-right Front National – now called Rassemblement National – from financial difficulties after the Parliamentary and presidential elections of 2017 came from a French businessman with commercial interests in Africa, Mediapart can reveal.
The loan from Laurent Foucher, which was transferred via his bank in the United Arab Emirates, ensured that the party's presidential campaign accounts were not in deficit by the deadline for them to be presented to the election watchdog. That would have invalidated the election accounts and meant that Marine Le Pen's party could not have got its campaign spending reimbursed by the state.
Mediapart has learned that the loan agreement was signed in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, but that the money itself was transferred via Abu Dhabi-based Noor Capital. The transfer was overseen by one of the bank's bosses, Franco-Swiss financier Olivier Couriol, whose name has cropped up in several criminal investigations. The exact origin of the loan funds has not yet been clearly established.
The Front National's bank at the time, Société Générale, were sufficiently concerned that questions would be raised about the regularity of the transaction that they called in the lender, Laurent Foucher, to ensure that the loan conformed to the rules. Foucher was asked to explain to four senior bank executives in person his reasons for the loan.

Enlargement : Illustration 1

A few months later, in October 2017, Société Générale, closed all the accounts the party held with it. It also closed all the accounts belonging to Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, a European Member of Parliament for the party who had received commission for arranging the 9 million euro Russian loan the party received in 2014, and who also oversaw the UAE loan. Both Schaffhauser, who stood down as an MEP in 2019, and Marine Le Pen had said they would lodge official complaints against Société Générale for “discrimination” but in the end the party itself did not do so.
When contacted, Société Générale said that because of banking secrecy rules it could not discuss the issue. It simply noted that it “conducts its activities with respect for regulatory requirements”.
This 8-million-euro loan, whose existence has already been disclosed by Mediapart, has also attracted the interest of France's election funding watchdog the Commission Nationale des Comptes de Campagne et des Financements Politiques (CNCCFP). In August 2018 it asked Rassemblement National (RN) to provide it with information on any loans that came from individuals (the number of lenders, rate of interest, loan period) having regard to the “size of this loan”. The RN replied and the CNCCFP then approved the loan. Though the watchdog lacks real investigatory powers, if it is sufficiently worried about a case it can refer it to the prosecution authorities.
Meanwhile the man who provided the loan, Laurent Foucher, seems to have difficulty in giving a clear reason for why he did so. “I didn't do it for ideological reasons, nor on behalf of someone else,” he told Mediapart. “I had this 8 million. They told me it was a question of life or death, I'd have done it for anyone. My life is always about looking out for others whoever they may be. If it had been the Socialist Party I'd have done it for the Socialist Party.”
The loan, which was provided for eight months, had the “backing of a state guarantee”, said the businessman. “Société Générale, who were the RN's bank, were to receive the [state] reimbursement for the campaign. It ring-fenced the money to send to me.” Foucher said interest of 6% was agreed - which is a very high rate.
The businessman did not, however, provide details about where the money came from. He initially suggested it came from funds he shared with a business partner - “with our partner we have funds available”, he said. But later his press officer said that it was in fact “his own personal money that he used”, still without clarifying the origin of that money. Rassemblement National did not respond to questions about what they knew about where the money came from.
There is nothing in Laurent Foucher's past that would predispose him to lending money to a far-right party. The businessman has a range of business interests in Africa, including in oil, mining, diamonds and a telephone operator called Telecel Gorup which has 700,000 subscribers across 26 countries. In the past he represented Jean-Christophe Mitterrand – son of the late socialist president François Mitterrand – in Mauritania, where his job was to manage investment in the latter's fishery.
Later Foucher took on as his banking advisor Jean-Charles Charki, the son-in-law of Nicolas Sarkozy's right-hand man Claude Guéant. In June 2013 Foucher took Charki and his father-in-law on a mysterious trip to the Central African Republic. The trip included a meeting with the country's president at the time, Michel Djotodia.
“I met Mr Foucher from time to time,” Claude Guéant told Mediapart. “When you tell me that he financed Rassemblement National, that comes as an enormous surprise,” he said. The former interior minister confirmed that he had gone on the trip to the Central African Republic without discussing the nature of the visit. Foucher himself suggests it was for personal reasons: “Claude Guéant had legal problems and he was clearly at rock bottom.” The businessman also said that he had lunched once at the Élysée with Guéant.
It was in June 2016 that Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, then still a far-right MEP, lined up Laurent Foucher as a possible lender to his party . He introduced him to RN's treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just, who asked the businessman for financial help. “He told me that the party was doing badly and that it was virtually bankrupt and that they had not managed to find a bank who would lend,” recalled Foucher. “I saw him again and he told me: 'Do you think you are able to do something?' It hadn't been something I was thinking about. But I did it.”

Curiously, the loan agreement was signed at Bangui in the Central African Republic, at the end of June 2017, but the money itself was transferred to Société Générale via the asset management company Noor Capital, based in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. The funds enabled the far-right party to pay its final remaining bills from the 2017 presidential election before closing its accounts as it was obliged to under the law by 6pm on July 7th 2017 – eleven weeks after the first round of the election.
At the time the accounts had a deficit of between 5 million and 6 million euros. Two close colleagues of Marine Le Pen, Wallerand de Saint-Just and the treasurer of her personal mini-party Jeanne, Axel Loustau, who was in charge of the presidential campaign funding unit, went personally to the offices of Société Générale with the signed agreement for the Foucher loan. Their task was to persuade the account managers who were clearly worried about where the money was coming from.
“At the Front National they were saying: 'Laurent has saved us',” recalled Laurent Foucher.
Mediapart has seen the entry for the 8-million-euro loan in RN's accounts. But 300,000 euros of it were immediately debited. The question arises as to whether this was to pay commission for obtaining the loan. Mediapart understands that Jean-Luc Schaffhauser was indeed paid a commission for bringing in the money. Though he refused to discuss the sum, the former MEP said that any commission was “declared to the tax authorities”. Laurent Foucher said: “I know that he had negotiated in parallel a commission with the Front.”
Foucher, the man who “saved” the far-right party, said that he had acted for “purely financial reasons”. He said: “We were supposed to invest in telecoms with my partner. With this loan paid at 6% over eight months I got a good deal.” He was repaid in March 2018 after the RN had had their campaign expenditure reimbursed by the state.
A few months later the businessman was again approached by Rassemblement National who were seeking to fund their 2019 European election campaign and pay off their debts. At the end of 2018 Foucher lunched with Marine Le Pen, Wallerand de Saint-Just and Jean-Luc Schaffhauser at the Hotel George V in Paris. The party's financial difficulties, faced with the imminent repayment of the Russian loan, were made clear. “They were very worried about this issue,” said Laurent Foucher.
However, getting a new loan was not so simple as it had been. Since the original Foucher loan agreement French law had changed. Loans from individuals are now subject to greater controls – to avoid disguised donations – and loans from companies are banned except for those agreed between political parties and banks based in the European Union. “They had the same problem except that this type of loan was no longer possible. I could no longer do it legally,” explained Laurent Foucher. “They wanted to know if I had a bank in my network who could lend. But I had no more leads than their own contacts.”
'Some things are confidential'
Noor Capital, the UAE-based investment and asset management company that Laurent Foucher used for the 8 million euro loan, also has a banking licence. It was created by the former oil minister Mana Saeed al-Otaiba and handles the assets of several family clans from the Emirates, as described on the website Intelligence Online.
As Noor is an asset management firm, its clients' money is placed in accounts which are in the company's rather than their name. So when Noor makes a bank transfer it is difficult to know who exactly has sent the money.
The executive in charge of the asset management department at Noor Capital is the Franco-Swiss financier Olivier Couriol, whose name, as already stated, has been mentioned in relation to several financial investigations. A former employee at the bank Crédit Suisse, Couriol is suspected of having set up some controversial offshore financial structures to handle the funds misappropriated by a Swiss wealth manager given a five-year jail term in 2018. In the financial affair involving the Kodiéran gold mine in Mali, which led to a corruption probe by France's financial crimes prosecution unit, Couriol was suspected of playing a role in the transfer of 20 million dollars by Airbus to an intermediary. And in an alleged oil corruption case in Nigeria he was questioned and had his property searched by Swiss investigators at the request of Italian judges.
Finally, in January 2019 he oversaw the controversial sale to Noor of three tonnes of Venezuelan gold, which came from state reserves. Couriol said the operation was perfectly legal but the scheme met with lots in opposition from regime opponents in Venezuela and also in the United States.
It was Olivier Couriol who initially put Jean-Luc Schaffhauser in touch with Laurent Foucher. In 2016, when the far-right MEP was contemplating a plan for a development fund in Africa specialising in security issues, Couriol introduced him to his “old friend” Foucher. This was to “open the doors” to the authorities in the Central African Republic. Subsequent meetings with Wallerand de Saint-Just then switched the focus of the two men to another issue: the Front National's financial survival.
Laurent Foucher insists there was nothing unusual in the 8 million euros being transferred from the United Arab Emirates. “Noor Capital is my bank in Abu Dhabi,” he told Mediapart. The businessman described Couriol as a “great financial adventurer” who is “great at engineering [things]”, a “cunning guy who does some incredible things”. Foucher adds that Couriol was only involved in the transaction on the technical side of things. “He gave me his advice, verified the loan,” said the businessman. “I gave an order to transfer it and he did it.” Foucher firmly denied that he was an “intermediary” or a “frontman”. He insisted: “There were bank guarantees from Noor Capital but Olivier Couriol did not loan the money.”
When questioned by Mediapart Jean-Luc Schaffhauser said: “Olivier Couriol is not the man orchestrating this transaction. It was Laurent Foucher who loaned it. Behind that, at a given point in a banking transaction there is someone who guarantees the assets, who releases the money and so on, and carries out the operation from a technical point of view.” The former MEP said he did not want to go into the details of the deal, referring to “professional secrets linked to all of that”. When first questioned back in April 2019 the MEP had at first denied that Foucher had lent the money. “I know Laurent Foucher but I don't know Laurent Foucher the lender,” he said at the time. But in September he confirmed to Mediapart that Foucher was indeed the man who lent the funds.
Neither Olivier Couriol or Noor capital responded to Mediapart's requests for a comment.
Rassemblement National also declined to comment about the loan, with both Marine Le Pen and Wallerand de Saint-Just refusing to respond. “No comment. I never respond to questions relating to financial questions,” Wallerand de Saint-Just told Mediapart. Jean-Michel Dubois, who is the treasurer for the party's election campaigns, simply said that RN had obtained “external loans” and that he did not want to “say any more about that, there are some things which are confidential”.
Foucher, who was the “principal advisor” on African strategy for the oil company Maurel & Prom (M&P) for ten years, made his mark in that industry in Gabon and the Congo. He is said to have set up and negotiated the 2007 sale of the Mboundi oilfield in the Republic of the Congo to the Italian group ENI for 1.4 billion dollars. He then set up on his own in a group of Luxembourg companies – Niel Petroleum and Niel Finances, which have nothing to do with French businessman of the same name Xavier Niel – and invested in telecoms. His wide range of business interests also includes pre-financing in the oil industry, potash, and diamond exploration permits.
In 2014 Foucher was given the coveted status of roving ambassador at the United Nations in Geneva on behalf of the Central African Republic. At one point question marks were raised over Foucher's dealings with his Kazakh business partners – the former mayor of Almaty Viktor Khrapunov and the oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov who were investigated in Kazakhstan for “corruption and misappropriation of public funds” - but the French businessman later said that he had distanced himself from them. He even gave evidence against them.

Enlargement : Illustration 3

The ex-MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhauser has recently distanced himself from RN. But at one time he was a member of the strategic committee for Marine Le Pen's presidential campaign and above all played an important part in the movement's financial operations. The international consultant even described himself as the the “man for certain tasks”. Today he says: “I saved the [National] Front twice.”
It was Schaffhauser who in 2014 negotiated the party's 9-million-euro Russian loan. And he was he who in 2016 put the Front National in contact with another Russian bank with the view to arranging a 3-million-euro loan for the presidential campaign the next year, though the plans did not come off. Then in 2017 it was the MEP who helped obtain the 8-million-euro loan from Laurent Foucher.
In February 2016 the French justice system took a close look at the MEP's affairs and any commissions he might have earned from the loan deals after the French Treasury's financial transactions monitoring body Tracfin flagged up his dealings. A preliminary investigation was opened. Jean-Luc Schaffhauser later said that his home had been searched but said he had given investigators “the information they asked for” and noted that he had never been placed under formal investigation. “I had the right to receive this commission and this transaction was declared,” he said.
The former MEP, who is close to the traditional Catholic movement Opus Dei, has since 1991 worked to improve relations between the Vatican, Russia and the Orthodox Church. In the 2000s he worked for large French groups Total, Auchan and defence and aircraft firm Dassault and is a specialist in helping companies establish an overseas presence and finding finance for companies. Both at the European Parliament and through his own think thank, the Académie Européenne, Schaffhauser has strongly defended Russian interests. He has twice gone to Donbass in Ukraine to support pro-Russian separatists.
Jean-Luc Schaffhauser also knows Claude Guéant and said he had met him several times in his office at the Élysée when the latter was secretary-general there under President Nicolas Sarkozy. “I promoted plans for a public investment bank, we also spoke about Russia, and China, where I represent Dassault Falcon [editor's note, Dassault's business jet],” he said. Guéant, who said he had never been aware of the UAE loan, said of Schaffhauser's visits: “He had some interesting ideas concerning investment.”
According to Laurent Foucher, Schaffhauser is currently in discussions about becoming Olivier Couriol's business associate. In April 2019 the ex-MEP had told Mediapart that that he wanted to join the bank based in Abu Dhabi “as an employee”. He already knows the UAE very well, having set up a consultancy practice, Multipolar World Dubaï (MWD, there through which he re-billed some of his services as a consultant, as his Parliamentary declarations of interest show. In particular he represented the interests of a Filipino port developer in Cameroon.
Back in 2014 Schaffhauser made an initial attempt to get a loan for the Front National from a bank in Abu Dhabi. That effort failed at the last moment and instead he turned his attention to Russia.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter