They knew in advance that it would be a sensitive matter and that searching the home of one of France's most important officials, Alexis Kohler, secretary general at the Élysée and President Emmanuel Macron's chief of staff, was never going to be an easy task. But investigators did not bargain on having to face quite so many obstacles. On October 6th 2020, when detectives from the police financial crimes unit the Brigade de Répression de la Délinquance Économique (BRDE) arrived at the gates of Le Quai Branly – an annex of the Élysée in Paris – at 6.30am their request to enter was met with a blunt refusal.
The army officer in charge of security barred their entry even though the residential building in question has no special protected legal status. Instead, the detectives were asked to accept the situation and wait. And wait they did, for more than an hour and a half. It was only after the arrival of Alexis Kohler's lawyer, Éric Dezeuze, that they were finally allowed in. An hour and a half; enough time to get prepared for the detectives' search.
This episode is just one of a number of unusual incidents that have marked the Kohler case, an out-of-the-ordinary affair in many ways. For more than a decade Alexis Kohler did not publicly disclose the fact that he was a close cousin of the Aponte family, the main shareholders in the major shipping line Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC).
Hiding his family ties, this public servant was on many occasions - and in different posts - in a position to put the state's resources at the disposal of the maritime transport group. The latter benefited from having more than three billion euros in loans guaranteed by the state (in other words, on extremely favourable terms) to fund the construction of its cruise ships by the shipbuilding firm Chantiers de l'Atlantinque.
In law, Alexis Kohler's situation is impossible: a public servant cannot be involved in contracts with a company, or oversee or handle cases involving it, when they have family ties or close relationships with that company. In law, breaching this rule means “by its very nature compromising one's impartiality, one's independence or one's objectivity in relation to a business”. It means risking accusations of an illegal conflict of interests, which is punishable by up to five years in prison under France's Criminal Code. In law, Alexis Kohler is also presumed innocent.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Since Mediapart's initial revelations on the affair back in May 2018, and despite subsequent investigations and revelations, the Élysée secretary general's defence has not changed one jot. “Alexis Kohler has always respected and still respects all the legal rules and regulations which govern the exercise of activities and responsibilities that apply to civil servants. In particular, he has always informed his superiors of situations in which he could have found himself in a conflict of interest, has always stepped aside to avoid such situations and has always respected the advice of the ethics committee,” says the Élysée.
In June 2018 the country's financial crimes prosecution unit the Parquet National Financier (PNF) opened a a preliminary investigation for the “illegal conflict of interest” and “influence peddling” into the president's chief of staff following a complaint lodged by the anti-corruption organisation Anticor. The case was dropped by the PNF in August 2019 following a direct intervention by Emmanuel Macron.
Anticor then made a second complaint – including a civil suit - for “illegal conflict of interest” and “influence peddling” and for failing to make a declaration to the body overseeing financial probity in public life the Haute Autorité pour la Transparence de la Vie Publique (HATVP). This led to the opening of a judge-led investigation on June 24th 2020. It was the examining magistrates or judges leading this investigation who gave the order for Alexis Kohler's home to be searched in October of that year.
The first investigation, which was dropped, had already raised questions over Alexis Kohler's line of defence. A number of breaches were highlighted: he had told only a handful of people about his situation and, contrary to what he claimed, he had not recused himself on many occasions in cases where MSC could be affected.
Since the new investigation was launched in 2020 new information has emerged which may be even more damning for Alexis Kohler. Not only was he much more involved that had been thought in dossiers concerning MSC, either directly or indirectly, but some documents and emails have also disappeared. They were deleted in order to remove any trace that might have shed light on his role and his interventions when he was at the Ministry of Finance, with the aim of preventing judicial investigators from going any further in their investigations.
Indeed, what took place was nothing other than a clean-up operation to get rid of documents that could be compromising for Alexis Kohler. Mediapart has been told that the public sector financial institution SFIL, which set up a credit arrangement for MSC, started this operation immediately after our first revelations on the issue. Similar cleaning up procedures appear to have been carried out inside the shipbuilders Chantiers de l'Atlantique (formerly STX France) while a number of documents also seem to have vanished at the Ministry of Finance.
Mediapart questioned the ministry about the rules surrounding preserving documents and emails and about the disappearance of some documents, but it had not responded by the time this article was published. Meanwhile the managing director at Chantiers de l'Atlantique, Laurent Castaing, told Mediapart: “Like many people I only keep the most important and interesting emails.”
The problem is that this clean-up operation, which was carried out in a hurried and non-methodical way, left traces. Some documents that disappeared in one place re-emerged in others. Some emails, linked to Alexis Kohler in one way or another but which supposedly did not exist, were found in the inboxes of others involved. All of which only naturally increases suspicion.
In a response after the original article was published SFIL vehemently denied they had removed documents from their archives following Mediapart's original revelations. “We entirely refute all these completely unfounded allegations which damage our image and reputation and which insinuate that SFIL may have committed the offence of destroying evidence,” it wrote. Mediapart stands by the story.
Daily involvement with STX France
In June 2014 Kohler, who was then deputy director of the agency that oversees the state's investments in businesses, the Agence des Participations de l’État (APE), argued his case to the public sector ethics committee that he should be allowed to take up a post at MSC after leaving his public service job. He did not mention his family links with the Aponte family, simply stating that he had known the family “for a long time”.
But he had also been just as adamant about his dealings with shipbuilders STX France, on whose board he sat as a representative of the French state. He stated that while on the board he had only twice voted in favour of projects that favoured MSC and that these were on the instructions of the APE. In a report written as part of the initial preliminary investigation, detectives from the PNF noted that Alexis Kohler had “taken part in five votes favourable to operations linked to MSC”.
Yet new documents that have been unearthed show that Alexis Kohler had an almost daily involvement in the STX France dossier from the summer of 2011 onwards. At the time the South Korean parent company STX wanted to get rid of the head of STX France, Jacques Hardelay, because of poor trading results. However, thanks to an agreement between the shareholders and the French state, the latter had a role in choosing the new boss. And it was Alexis Kohler, through his position at the APE, who oversaw the process. His role in this has remained completely unknown until now.
Laurent Castaing today plays down the role of the APE in general and Alexis Kohler in particular in his recruitment by what is now called the Chantiers de l'Atlantique. “It was down to the majority shareholder at the time, STX, to make the decision,” he said. “And it was indeed with its representative Mr K.S. Rhee (chair of the board at Chantiers de l'Atlantique) that I had a job interview, and it was he who finalised my contract, without the help of APE.” He explained: “According to what Mr K.S. Rhee said during the interview, I was competing with another candidate.”
It is true that a private recruitment specialist, Process, was appointed to select future candidates for the post. But, as the investigation revealed, it was Alexis Kohler himself who drew up the list of candidates. And he already had a preference: Laurent Castaing, who at the time was director of the Le Havre port authority in northern France, where Alexis Kohler was also a state representative on the port's supervisory board.
The two men certainly seemed to know other other and were on familiar terms. Years later, at the end of August 2018, after Mediapart published details about Alexis Kohler's role at Le Havre, Laurent Castaing wrote to the port authority's president. “I was aware of Alexis's personal situation, I knew he was from the Aponte family, and he had confirmed that to me. So I kept an eye on him. I don't know if you were aware, but I believe I told you,” he wrote.
During his time at Le Havre Laurent Castaing remained completely silent about Alexis Kohler's “abnormal” situation. Today he says: “As managing director and then as chair of the directorate at Le Havre port I was neither a member of the board of directors nor of the supervisory board, and I simply attended the meetings of these bodies, held one after another, to put forward my case and give my opinion if I was asked.”
Enlargement : Illustration 2
At the time Laurent Castaing was not keen on leaving Le Havre to go to the shipbuilders at Saint-Nazaire in western France. He thought the firm's situation was too weak and difficult. It would take all of Alexis Kohler's persuasion for him to accept the move. For six months the two men met, spoke, and discussed matters, with Laurent Castaing loyally reporting all his conversations with the South Korean president of STX France. But the port boss was still hesitating about taking on the new role.
In the end, he wrote to Alexis Kohler at the end of December 2011: “If the situation is too inextricable with K.S. Rhee [editor's note, the South Korean president of the shipbuilders], and as APE needs me to go there 'by order', I'll willingly go.” He was appointed managing director of STX France in February 2012. “We thought that you would be the most credible representative, especially, first of all, for MSC, and also for [editor's note, cruise group] RCC (Royal Caribbean),” said one of the management team at the shipbuilders who supported his candidacy, congratulating him on his appointment.
So how is it that no trace of the role played by Alexis Kohler in the choice of boss at shipbuilders Chantiers de l'Atlantique, or any of the conversations that he had, were found in the archives of the APE or the Ministry of Finance? But then, there was no sign either of the instructions about when exactly Alexis Kohler should recuse himself in his role as deputy chief of staff to finance minister Pierre Moscovici. Nor was there any trace of Kohler's letter explaining his family links to the Aponte family that was sent to Emmanuel Macron when he became chief of staff to the latter, who was then economy minister. And nor was there any sign of several parts of his administrative file.
In 2018 Astrid Milsan, then deputy director of APE - and now at the stock market regulator the Autorité des Marchés Financiers - stated that these gaps were due to a “poor state of archive conservation at the APE”.
A stream of vanishing emails
Rémy Rioux, who was close to Kohler and who was at the time chief of staff to Pierre Moscovici, Julien Denormandie, who handled the STX case in the same minister's office, and even the minister Pierre Moscovici himself were all insistent in their evidence for the initial investigation: Alexis Kohler had always recused himself in all cases that involved MSC, whether directly or indirectly.
This version of events, however, was contradicted in the initial investigation report written in June 2019. It stated that though several emails showed he was aware of his potential “conflict of interest”, Alexis Kohler took “no measures to organise a formal recusal on all questions touching on MSC. On the contrary, he received APE and Treasury reports on cruise ship contracts and on the issue of financial guarantees, both for STX and MSC. The advisor to the [ministerial] office [editor's note, Julien Denormandie] who dealt with STX in particular included him in email discussions.”
How could Alexis Kohler be kept away from such issues if no precise rules on when to recuse himself had been established? At the time STX and MSC were hot topics for the ministries of finance and industry. The main shareholder in the shipbuilders, the South Korean firm STX, was in a bad financial state. The Saint-Nazaire shipyard had to be kept going and there was talk about re-capitalising the firm and ensuring it could get new orders by underwriting its funding and guarantees. At the time, dozens of emails on these issues were sent between the APE, the French Treasury and ministerial offices.
The new investigation has now unearthed fresh emails, in particular those involving Laurent Castaing. They confirm that Alexis Kohler was aware of everything that concerned MSC, beyond the information that was reaching the Ministry of Finance. The managing director of STX kept him regularly informed. On a number of occasions Castaing was a loyal spokesperson for the stance adopted by MSC, who were his main client. The shipping line wanted to buy a stake in the shipbuilders alongside their competitor Royal Caribbean, and it was opposed to the Italian shipbuilding group Fincantieri doing the same.
“The status quo on STX shareholdings is no longer desirable … Only MSC possesses sufficient leverage to obtain a transfer organised by KDB [editor's note, the South Korean bank that was the main creditor of the STX group which was then facing bankruptcy],” said Castaing in an email to Alexis Kohler and Martin Vial, APE's director. According to the Ministry of Finance's records this email conversation seems never to have existed.
In a more personal email sent to Alexis Kohler in June 2016, when he knew the latter was seeking to join MSC quite soon, Castaing wrote: “MSC is very active at the moment in advancing its takeover plans. MSC is relying on the partial green light given by your minister to Mr Aponte during their meeting in February. If there is opposition to this idea can I advise you to say so now and quickly.”
Laurent Castaing considered this email so important that he resent it to himself with the instruction 'keep'. Like other messages, this email was not found at the Ministry of Finance when detectives carried out their investigations. Conversely, some 15 or so emails which were logged in the first investigation have since vanished from the archives at Chantiers de l'Atlantique. These include one from 2014 in which Laurent Castaing sent a message to Alexis Kohler when the latter was leaving Pierre Moscovici's office. “Thanks, too, for being a discreet supervisor,” he wrote.
Detectives noted in their report: “With the exception of emails about STX accounts information, no emails [editor's note, from STX] to APE appear after July 25th 2015. The absence of emails raises questions.” Indeed, the authors highlight a number of events – the launch of ocean liners, the signing of new orders, discussions about shareholding – that would have justified exchanges between the shipbuilder and its state shareholder.
The clean-up operation went quite deep. All emails containing the address of the minister's office at the Ministry of Finance, and MSC and Aponte addresses, disappeared from the shipbuilder's archives from the same dates until 2019. Yet during this period the shipping company was involved in outstanding orders worth some three billion euros to build it new ships.
A 'contact' at the Élysée
However, the conversations did not stop when Alexis Kohler left the civil service in November 2016 to go and work at MSC in Geneva. He has scarcely arrived at his new offices when Laurent Castaing wrote to congratulate him on his appointment. Kohler replied quickly, thanking him, and referred to his former boss's plans for the French presidential elections in 2017. “I'm not abandoning Emmanuel Macron. In parallel I'm continuing to direct the programme for his campaign,” he wrote. Then Kohler concluded: “I'm counting on you to tell me what's going on and what's not going okay here.”
The two men continued to swap emails regularly on the issues, especially as the issue of the future of the shipyards at Saint-Nazaire was a hot topic. The South Korean group STX had now gone bankrupt and so its stake in STX France had to go up for auction in Seoul.
The Élysée and a majority of the government, who were determined to resolve the issue before President François Hollande's term of office ended in 2017, favoured a sale to Fincantieri. MSC and Royal Caribbean, the shipbuilder's two main clients, had publicly opposed this plan. They proposed another round of financing in which they would take a 20% stake of the capital. Laurent Castaing worked to conclude the financing round by calling in local industrialists and coming up with ideas to allow employees to take a stake in the firm's capital.
Though he was working for MSC, Alexis Kohler still had access to the inner workings of the state and he took part in a meeting at the Ministry of Finance about the takeover of STX, as Mediapart has already revealed. But as one email shows, he was also in direct discussions with the boss at APE, Martin Vial, about possible solutions – just like old times.
In May 2017 Laurent Castaing was quick to celebrate Emmanuel Macron's election victory with his management team at the shipbuilder. He spoke of a “contact” he had at the Élysée from whom he could get information. From May 15th 2017 onwards he regularly shared his analysis of the situation with his management team, based on information which seemed to draw on some well-placed sources.
“We can now potentially change things on the shareholding,” he wrote to his management team. “Because the state is able to pre-empt [editor's note, it had a preferential right to buy the STX stake]. But will it do so? I hardly think so with a pro-European government and one with, moreover, someone close to MSC in it. That said, it's the last chance for a counter attack.”
On July 26th 2017 the new finance minister under President Macron, Bruno Le Maire, announced the 'temporary' nationalisation of STX France, which was renamed Chantiers de l'Atlantique.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
