It was on November 30th last year when far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour announced his bid to run in the French presidential elections in April, following a summer of barely disguised campaign meetings presented as “conferences” about a book he had recently published.
His clear intention to run led to him being included in regular opinion surveys, where he reached a position of neck-and neck with the far-right’s traditional candidate, Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National party – the former Front National – and ahead of leftwing candidates. But Zemmour, 63, a highly controversial figure in France with several convictions for hate speech, who for years has been a regular columnist for French daily Le Figaro and a television pundit, had no established party behind him to finance his campaign.
In December, Zemmour held a campaign meeting at a conference hall in Villepinte, a north-east suburb of Paris, which cost around 500,000 euros. His campaign headquarters are located in the upmarket 8th arrondissement in Paris, close to the Champs-Élysées avenue, while he regularly travels across France on walkabouts and meetings. All of which raises the question of where his funding comes from.
Mediapart has obtained internal documents – including a list of around 1,000 ‘VIP’ guests at his major meeting in Villepinte – which, together with the personal accounts of some of the individuals concerned, reveal how fund-raising dinners, attracting high-flying, wealthy professionals, were organised since May last year, and reveal the identities of 35 individuals among the major donors to Zemmour’s campaign. One of these was Chantal Bolloré, the sister of French billionaire industrialist and media tycoon Vincent Bolloré.
The documents offer an insight into the social and political makeup of Zemmour’s inner circles of influential donors who, far from the usual caricatures of the far-right electorate, include industrialists, bankers, lawyers, business consultants, and senior managers.
According to Zemmour’s campaign team, a third of the candidate’s financial resources come from his movement ‘Reconquête!’, which claims to have attracted, just three months before the presidential elections begin, around 80,000 fee-paying members (and to attract up to 800 new ones daily). With the cost of membership at 30 euros per person, that would mean it has received a total of 2.4 million euros.
Added to that are funds provided by a support group, Les Amis d’Éric Zemmour, which last year gained the legal status of an association for political funding. “We’re at about 6 million euros,” Julien Madar, financial director for the polemicist’s campaign, told Mediapart, although he provided no documented evidence of this. Madar, a former merchant banker who once worked for Rothschild & Co, said “more than 25,000 people” had made donations, of which around 75% were at, or under, 150 euros, which he suggested illustrated the popular appeal of Zemmour.
On December 10th last year, radio station Europe 1 (owned by billionaire industrialist and media tycoon Vincent Bolloré, whose TV channel CNews employed the polemicist as a commentator until last September) reported that the Zemmour’s campaign funds had hit the “jackpot” with “more than 2 million euros” . Which would mean that it had since gained another 4 million euros, over the space of little more than a month, according to the figures claimed by Madar.
The sum is colossal when compared to other presidential candidates outside of the large political parties: on December 31st, the campaign director for radical-left LFI party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced donations had reached 1 million euros , while Green EELV party candidate Yannick Jadot was reported earlier this month to have attracted 200,000 euros in donations. In comparison, during his election campaign in 2017, Emmanuel Macron had raised around 9 million euros in donations by the last month before voting began.
Whether or not the figures put forward by Zemmour’s campaign team are exaggerated in order to lend him an image of credibility and popular support, it appears that Zemmour very early began seeking out wealthy donors, notably individuals in business circles.
Several of the latter have provided loans of between 100,000 euros and 200,000 euros, while others have given sums ranging between 1,000 euros and 7,500 euros to, variously, Zemmour’s political funding association and his Reconquête! movement; under French law, no more than 4,600 euros can be donated to a candidate’s campaign funds, and donations to a party are limited to 7,500 euros.
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The major donors identified by Mediapart include bankers and investment fund managers. Some are French expatriates based in Britain, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Morocco. One is an investor in the technology sector, who had worked for ten years within the Bolloré group. Another is a director of a US financial services firm, who was once part of the management team for the conservative Les Républicains party’s branch in Britain. There is the chief executive of an international investment bank, and also the head of a Geneva investment bank’s compliance department. Others include the chief executive of a major financial intermediation institution, the head of an online marketing firm, and an expatriate financial consultant.
There are also senior managers in industrial firms and property companies. One donor is a senior manager with the US pharma giant Johnson & Johnson, another is a marketing manager in the telecoms industry. Along with these are also several lawyers specialised in business or tax affairs who work for large French and international law firms.
In this largely male-dominated circle, one name that stands out is that of Chantal Bolloré, the sister of Vincent Bolloré and who sits on his group’s board of governors. Contacted by Mediapart, she said she could not remember precisely how much she donated to Zemmour’s campaign. “I think it is 1,000 euros,” she said before ending the conversation, saying that she did not wish to speak further about the matter. Zemmour’s campaign finance director Julien Madar described Chantal Bolloré as a “supporter like hundreds of others”, underlining that her contribution was a “personal donation” and adding that Vincent Bolloré had not made a donation.
As finance director, Madar, 32, who is the managing director of Checkmyguest, an online, short-term rental agency with almost 800 upmarket Paris apartments on its books, leads the fundraising operations for Zemmour’s campaign. During the last presidential election, in 2017, he figured on a list of guests at a fundraising dinner in support of Macron’s ‘En March!’ movement. “I had worked a bit on financing start-ups, it was really purely a consultation,” he said about his presence among Macron's supporters.
His name first became public last September, when an investigation by Radio France journalists revealed how his online rental agency provided a letterbox for the Amis d’Éric Zemmour association, to where donors would send their cheques. Madar explained then that it was just “to help out” the association, on the request of Sarah Knafo, Zemmour’s 28-year-old campaign director and personal partner. “At the time, my role wasn’t public and wasn’t supposed to be,” he told Mediapart. “My commitment had no link to my company.”
Helping Madar with the fundraising are individuals who use their personal network of contacts. One is Tom Didi, a young jurist and businessman and member of both Les Amis d’Éric Zemmour and Reconquête!. He told Mediapart he is helping the campaign on “a part-time basis” alongside his professional activities. “I work in the shadows,” he said. “I collect the endorsements and finances that I can.” (By “endorsements” he was referring to the legal requirement of every presidential candidate that they receive approval for their participation in the election from 500 elected officials, ranging from local mayors or councillors to Members of Parliament). “I don’t show myself, the job is better done when one is in the shadows,” added Didi, who declined to divulge figures.
His involvement followed an exchange of emails with Zemmour that began in April last year. He had written to Zemmour via the polemicist’s professional email address at French daily Le Figaro, where Zemmour wrote a weekly opinion column. Didi described that as “an exchange of ideas, intellectual”, which, he said, resulted, after contact with “several intermediaries”, in him lending his support to the campaign. “It’s the first time I have committed myself politically,” said Didi. “I know people who have money. I try to get to know their ideas better and, if they match, I ask them if they’d like to make a donation to the campaign. I explain that it’s tax-deductible, arguments which can bring about donations. And then, these people can themselves call upon others.”
Among the list of ‘VIP’ guests at the meeting in Villepinte were also those who, while not donors, open up their contact books for the campaign. One of these is Patrick, who runs a business advising on fundraising and whose identity is withheld on his request. “I have clients on the Left, on the Right,” he explained. “I’m not the militant who goes sticking up posters and who sees Zemmour as a living god. My job consists of presenting people to other people. I have friends who like Zemmour – I present them.” Patrick said he also gave his help to a Macron support group.
He comes from a family of pieds-noirs (literally, “black feet”), the name given to settlers of European, and mostly French, origin in France’s former colonies of North Africa, and who fled to France during the process of independence. Zemmour is himself the son of Berber Jews from Algeria who arrived in France in 1952, at the start of the bloody war of independence, and who resettled in the Paris suburbs. Patrick, whose grandparents became the caretakers of a social housing block in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine, said he can relate to ‘the personal and family history” of Zemmour. “He has had a similar experience. And as pieds-noirs we give support to pieds-noirs.”
High society dinners
Mediapart has learnt that between May and November last year, a series of fundraising dinners for Zemmour were held in Paris and in London and Geneva. Jérémie Jeausserand, a Paris-based tax lawyer, was behind three of these gatherings. Contacted by Mediapart, he declined to be interviewed, citing his “private life” (although Julien Madar described his support for Zemmour as being “public”).
One fundraising party was organised by two other ‘VIP’ guests at Villepinte, Valérie and Olivier de Panafieu, at their Paris home, where Zemmour appeared before a gathering of around 30 invited people. Valérie de Panafieu, who in 2013 posted on social media her support for opponents of the same-sex marriage legislation in France, did not reply to Mediapart’s attempts to contact her via email. Her husband Olivier, a graduate of the prestigious Paris business school HEC, is head of the Paris office of German management consultancy firm Roland Berger. He replied to Mediapart via his lawyer (see below). The couple held the fundraising dinner on November 9th last year when, according to information given to Mediapart, French travel writers Alexandre et Sonia Poussin were among the guests.
The pair are well known in France for their ‘Africa Trek’ books and documentary recounting their voyage by foot across the African continent, and the documentary ‘Madatrek’ about their tour of Madagascar. They have publicly enthused over the “extraordinary diversity of the world”, and called for an “understanding of difference”, and denounced racism as being “a scourge that sullies humanity”. Questioned by Mediapart about their reported presence at the meeting with the far-right candidate at the home of Valérie and Olivier de Panafieu, Alexandre Poussin replied: “Maybe I was there, maybe not. It’s my private life, I won’t answer you.”
The November 9th gathering included senior management figures from the French construction and concessions giant Vinci and luxury fashion firm Chanel, along with two associates in a leading Paris law firm, and Pierre Beraud-Sudreau, the former lead singer of a 1980s French pop and new wave group Partenaire Particulier. According to sources, Beraud-Sudreau, who now works as a property consultant, has made a donation to Zemmour’s campaign. Questioned about his presence at the fundraising party and whether he had made a donation to Zemmour’s campaign, Beraud-Sudreau said he could not reply to “these types of questions which are about private matters”, adding: “I vote in the secrecy of the polling booth.”
In a reply to Mediapart’s questions and issued via his lawyer, Olivier de Panafieu said: “I do not wish to comment on my individual and strictly personal right, nor that of my wife, to interest myself in the civic and democratic life of my country. If I have happened to take part in different events of democratic life for different parties, including fundraising dinners, I have always done so in a personal capacity, and I also wish to declare that I have no official responsibility whatsoever in the management of a presidential campaign; neither with that of Mr Zemmour, nor with that of any other candidate.”
According to Julien Madar, the meetings like that organised at the Panafieu residence are not solely concerned with the “financial aspect”, insisting that Zemmour takes part also in order “to meet with entrepreneurs, industrialists, shop keepers, artisans, lawyers, financial people” so as to include “sectorial problematics” for consideration in his election manifesto.
Disillusioned conservatives
Another guest of Olivier de Panafieu at the November 9th fundraising dinner was Gilles de Beauvais, also a graduate of the HEC business school, who is a manager with an industrial group that manufactures medical equipment. He told Mediapart that he and his wife were introduced to Zemmour’s campaign team by friends. De Beauvais, who voted in the 2017 presidential elections for conservative candidate François Fillon, told Mediapart he had been “astonished” that November evening to come across “globally senior management profiles” at the gathering, who he described as being “historically” in the political sphere of the conservative Les Républicains party and its wing of Fillon supporters.
De Beauvais said he briefly conversed “about this and that” with Zemmour “over a drink” before making a “family donation” with his wife to the campaign, which places them among the major donors. He said that he was won over by “the way Éric Zemmour speaks about France and the future […] his constancy, his freedom of tone, his frankness”. He was subsequently invited to the rally at Villepinte, which he described as being “a lovely meeting, very professional, of great quality”.
Among other donors are individuals with longstanding links to the far-right. They include Xavier Caïtucoli, the former CEO of utilities company Direct Énergie, now a subsidiary of the Total group, who provided a loan. He is a graduate of the École Polytechnique engineering school, one of the most elite higher education establishments in France, who was once an official with the small far-right MNR party in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of south-east France. He did not reply to Mediapart’s request to interview him.
Large donors include some who previously supported the successive election campaigns of candidates for the main conservative party, now called Les Républicains, previously called the UMP, and before that the RPR. “Sociologically, they are from the Right who voted Fillon or Macron in 2017, who were then disappointed by ‘Macronism’, notably on sovereign issues, [like] security, immigration, the identity of France,” said Madar. He added that “the common denominator” was that “they voted for [Nicolas] Sarkozy in 2007”.
That is the case of Didier Wisselmann, who served as deputy chief of staff for Christian Estrosi when the latter was a minister under Sarkozy’s 2007-2012 presidency, and also chief of staff for another of Sarkozy’s ministers, Laurent Wauquiez. A former prefect who was also posted as economic attaché with the French embassy in Israel, Wisselmann is today head of the “audit, risk, ethics and compliance” department for carmaker Renault, and sits on its corporate management committee. Wisselmann has personally known Zemmour for more than ten years, and attended the meeting at Villepinte when he made a large donation to the campaign. He confirmed this when contacted by Mediapart, but he declined to detail the reasons for his commitment.
Daniel Papeix is a former militant and donor for the conservative Les Républicains party, which he left two years ago because, he told Mediapart, he found it changed direction according to which way the wind was blowing. He is now a regional representative, in the central Haute-Vienne département (equivalent to a county), and donor for Zemmour’s campaign. Last summer he learnt of Zemmour’s intention to run in the elections from the far-right mayor of the southern town of Orange, Jacques Bompard, who Papeix said “looked after Zemmour’s fan club at one time”. Papeix wrote to Zemmour via Le Figaro. “He wrote back to me with a very nice letter, charming,” said Papeix. “I asked to be given a role of responsibility. At the beginning, there weren’t many of us.”
Former hedge fund manager Guy Martinolle, 70, who said he was “disappointed” by former conservative presidents Jacques Chirac and his successor Nicolas Sarkozy, donated to Zemmour’s campaign as of September. He has been an expatriate since 2005, first settling in Switzerland and now in Morocco. He has been a major donor for other causes in France, like a charity for the orphans of police officers, a foundation for orphans and widows of the gendarmerie, and another for the bereaved families of fire brigade personnel, which, because they are tax deductible, avoids him from being liable for France’s property wealth tax (the IFI). He said he had declined invitations to fundraising dinners for Zemmour in Paris and Geneva, but sent a cheque for 5,000 euros to the Amis d’Éric Zemmour association “so that he can get his message across”. For Martinolle, Zemmour “will certainly not be elected, and will probably not reach the [final] second round” – a playoff between the two leading candidates – but, he said, “the issues he places on the table merit being there”.
Martinolle said he met Zemmour in Brazil a few years ago, introduced through a mutual friend, when he was “really impressed by his knowledge of history”. But he insisted that his donation to Zemmour’s campaign does not imply he “shares his ideas one hundred percent”, and last autumn had second thoughts when Zemmour made a series of gaffes. “He had a quite calamitous beginning to his campaign after the launch, he allowed himself to be caged in to controversies. He added to them himself,” said Martinolle. “He wasn’t taking the high ground; he wasn’t pedagogic enough.” Like a number of other donors interviewed by Mediapart, he said he was not certain to vote for Zemmour during the elections, and did not exclude the idea of a “useful vote” in favour of whoever is the best-placed rightwing candidate in order to defeat centre-right Emmanuel Macron.
An indication that supporting Zemmour remains difficult for some to publicly admit, several donors who were contacted for this report asked for their names to be withheld. One of these agreed to explain why he was backing Zemmour but only on the condition that he was not identified, notably because he wanted to keep his commitment for the far-right candidate secret from his employer. Others said their support for Zemmour met with disapproval from their entourage. “Many of my friends are in the CAC 40 [benchmark French stock exchange], are rolling in it, and vote Macron,” said Martinolle. “When I say that I had helped the launch of Éric Zemmour’s campaign, [it was as if] I could have signed up with Goebbels or Hitler, it was the same thing. But they don’t take the time to get to the bottom of issues.”
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse