France's financial crimes prosecution unit the Parquet National financier (PNF) has opened an investigation for “corruption” over a security contract signed between a French company and Russian oligarch Iskander Makhmudov and negotiated from start to finish by Alexandre Benalla when he was still a security aide to President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée. The investigation is being carried out by detectives from Paris.
As Mediapart revealed last December, Iskander Makhmudov signed a security contract with a firm called Mars, run by Benalla's friend Vincent Crase, at the time when the latter was head of security for the ruling La République en Marche and Benalla was a security aide at the Élysée. Both men lost their jobs in July 2018 after news and video footage was revealed of them assaulting protesters at a Paris demonstration on May 1st 2018. Both men were later placed under investigation and ordered not to contact each other.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
The security contract, renewable quarterly, was for the protection of the Russian's properties in France and his family in Monaco. Iskander Makhmudov, who is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and heads an industrial empire, is also suspected by several European judges of links with one of the worst criminal gangs in Moscow. Alexandre Benalla was aware of the oligarch's profile and also knew that the French justice system was interested in him. For an advisor at the Élysée to use his status to do business with a billionaire close to the Putin government is something that, at the very least, raises questions. This is especially true given that at the time Benalla was cleared for access to some “defence secrets” and was aware of what was going on in the heart of the French presidency.
Contacted by Mediapart, the PNF made no comment.
Alexandre Benalla has stated, including on oath when he was questioned by the Senate's commission of inquiry into the affair on January 21st, that he “never ...contributed to” the “negotiation” or the “conclusion” of this Russia deal.
But information collected by Mediapart show that, on the contrary, Alexandre Benalla was personally involved in this contract, including in its financial arrangements.
Though back in December last year Benalla had told Mediapart that there was “no link between Makhmudov and me”, the president's former security aide met the oligarch's representative in France, Jean-Louis Hagenauer, on several occasions. The latter told Mediapart that Vincent Crase had been designated by Alexandre Benalla to implement the contract. Hagenauer and Benalla continued to see each other. Proof of this is a photo taken at the end of August 2018 (see below) in the château owned by businessman Vincent Miclet in the Périgord area of south-west France.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
The discussions over the contract had in fact started much earlier, in the winter of 2017. They gathered pace in June 2018 in the presence of Alexandre Benalla though he was still working at the Élysée. The talks with people from Velours – the security company to whom Mars had sub-contracted the work under the contract and who are, incidentally, Benalla's former employers – were held a short distance from the Élysée at Café Damas, Benalla's favoured spot, in the most watched over area of Paris.
On June 28th 2018 a first payment of 294,000 euros arrived into Mars's bank account. A little more than half, 172,200 euros, was then transferred into two accounts belonging to the service provider Velours, who were paying seven people with a military background for this contract.
But the affair involving the violence on May Day – which only became public in July – changed the situation. On July 26th, when Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase met, there was panic. Just the day before the bank Société Générale, where Mars had its account, called on Crase to produce the contract that justified the arrival of 300,000 euros from an account in Monaco.
Six days earlier – and just 48 hours after Le Monde had revealed details about the May 1st violence - Velours had backed out of the contract. The security firm did not know that Benalla and Crase were involved in such a high-level affair. The reputational risk for them was enormous. Velours asked for the arrangements to be changed quickly.
Benalla was furious with his old friends there. “Velours ... they're going to fuck themselves up, I don't give a shit,” he says in the recording. Vincent Crase adds: “I don't much like rats who leave the ship.”
The first period of the quarterly contract with Velours was due to end in September. “Above all we must make sure the client isn't affected … and must make sure we continue the thing. Afterwards the, [security] service, we'll do it with someone else,” says Crase.
After being in the spotlight because of the May 1st affair, Benalla was worried about the repercussions for Mars and the interest that the justice system could show in the company. He wanted to change things.
“We have to cut the branch,” says Macron's former security aide on the tape. “We have to change the set up, we have to do what we'd planned to do and and transfer … You have to disappear from the company,” he tells Crase. “...So we need to find a guy … in the end I've got an idea in mind, but we must put the company in another guy's name … Because if not … they're going to carry out a preventive seizure and they'll put a stop to the company...” he adds.
Listen to the extract of that exchange here.
On the tape the former security chief at LREM, Vincent Crase, is worried. “It's in flames ...we have to try and get out of it,” he says to Benalla. He worries about leaks to the media. Above all he is worried about his own future financially after being sacked by the party. Benalla tries to reassure him, and says his old colleague will get unemployment benefit “for a year and a half” and “before doing that we'll get the money out of the company and we'll sort it out, we'll go to Morocco or Senegal and we'll have a ball,” he says, laughing, adding: “No but...we'll get there.”
Listen to the extract of that exchange here:
The tape shows the two friends are keen to act quickly, before the following evening. Vincent Crase has a meeting the same day at Société Générale, and Alexandre Benalla advised him to not hand the contract to the bank.
The new company documents for Mars, with a new manager, were almost finalised. But in the end they chose another option. “We must change the company,” says Benalla. A discreet company called 'France Close Protection' was set up on October 16th 2018. It is managed by Yoann Petit, a former soldier who worked on the contract for Velours, and it is lodged in the same registration centre as Mars.
Petit is also close to Benalla: he was the only one to have accompanied Macron's former aide in the Senate corridors during his first questioning before the commission of inquiry in September last year. The new company, France Close Protection, does not have its account at Société Générale and uses an online bank instead. In November last year Alexandre Benalla was listed as an employee of the company. He received 12,474 euros , while he had been receiving unemployment benefits of between 3,097 euros and 3,871 a month since his departure from the Élysée.
Meanwhile Benalla told his friend Vincent Crase: “You make an appearance in something, you're close to power, you have a company that provides you bank transfers from that guy [editor's note, Iskander Makhmudov] and they're going to do business with us, it could be ten times worse than it is.”
Alexandre Benalla, Vincent Crase, Iskander Makhmudov and the managers at Velours were all contacted by Mediapart but despite repeated requests none of them chose to make a comment. Back in December 2018 Alexandre Benalla told Mediapart: “I have never taken part in any negotiation, either directly or indirectly, with Mr Makhmudov or his representatives concerning the contract with the company Mars and Mr Vincent Crase,” he said. He denied any “link” between himself and Makhmudov.
Meanwhile in a separate development it emerged that prime minister Édouard Philippe's head of security has quit her post and moved to another role, following revelations about the secret meeting between Benalla and Crase on July 26th 2018, and claims that it took place at her flat.
Mediapart recently revealed how the investigation into alleged breach of privacy over the secret recordings of that meeting – which led to an attempt to search Mediapart's offices – came after the prime minister's office passed on to the prosecution authorities rumours from journalists about where that meeting took place.
Marie-Elodie Poitout, head of the Groupe de Sécurité du Premier Ministre (GSPM), admits that she knew Benalla socially but says she did not know Crase and denies any involvement in the secret meeting between the two men, which broke their bail conditions.
“However, aware of the sensitivity of her position and anxious to avoid any controversy [she] asked the Prime Minister to be assigned to another role inside the Ministry of the Interior,” a source at the prime minister's office said on Thursday February 7th, quoted by news agency Reuters. The same source said prime minister Édouard Philippe “respected” Poitout's decision while paying tribute to her “very great professionalism”.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter.
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