It is, perhaps, an unusual CV for a senior presidential aide. Media outlets, notably L’Express news magazine, have already revealed that Faouzi Lamdaoui, François Hollande's official advisor at the Elysée on equality and discrimination, has been questioned by fraud squad detectives investigating alleged “misuse of company funds” and “tax fraud” in relation to two companies he was connected with.
Now Mediapart can disclose that Lamdaoui has been closely involved with a whole series of small companies, some of which have had to repay back taxes, most of which have undergone numerous changes of shareholders and managers and few of which have filed official accounts. A number of the limited companies have also since been wound down. Mediapart also understands that when he was questioned on June 11th Lamdaoui, a close political ally of Hollande for many years, was interviewed under the status of 'assisted witness'. This status, peculiar to French law, lies part way between that of a simple witness and someone placed under formal investigation.
The formal preliminary investigation into the allegations, which is bound to cause fresh embarrassment for President Hollande after the resignation of his senior advisor Aquilino Morelle last month, was opened by the prosecution authorities in Paris in January 2013 and handed to officers from the fraud squad the Office central de lutte contre la corruption et les infractions financières et fiscales at Nanterre, west of Paris. The probe relates to two companies, Alpha Distributions and Alpha (later Cronoservice), of which the authorities believe Lamdaoui was the “de facto” boss.
Lamdaoui's lawyer has rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of his client. “There was absolutely no fraud of any nature whatsoever,” Ardavan Amir-Aslani told Mediapart. He said his client had “never been in charge in any way of the two companies cited, either directly or indirectly”. Amir-Aslani also noted that “the non-declaration of income is not tax fraud, which implies that a system has been put in place”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
However, Mediapart's investigations show that the links between Lamdaoui, who ran the logistical side of Hollande's presidential campaign, and describes himself as a “logistics engineer,” and the two companies are indeed very close. Documents also point to him being at the heart of a labyrinth of small companies, whether as shareholder, manager, director or employee between the years 1990 and 2012. There are eight such companies in all, according to the documents, including two which have faced proceedings before the commercial courts.
The companies all have numerous points in common. They are nearly always registered at the same address in Paris's 20th arrondissement or district, with a company that specialises in lodging business registrations. Most of them offer similar or related services, notably “import-export, motorbike courier services, management services, writing of certificates and administrative formalities” or transport. Their founders, associates or their managers are regularly the same people. They have similar names: Alpha, Alphas, Alpha distributions, Alpha SVE, Alpha Services, for example. And all are linked to Faouzi Lamdaoui, either using both his first names, Mohamed and Faouzi, or just one of them. These firms have almost never filed accounts, even though as limited companies they are obliged to do so by law.
One of the firms, which is also one of the two being targeted by the fraud squad officers, has been condemned by the commercial courts. Alpha Distributions was set up in 2006 by Faouzi Lamdaoui in joint ownership with a business partner as an import-export business also offering messenger and “business management” services. Three years later Alpha Distributions attracted the attention of the French tax authorities, who ultimately reported the case to the Commission des Infractions Fiscales (CIF), the body which decides on whether or not legal action should be taken.
On February 1st, 2010, in a letter seen by Mediapart, the CIF explained to the company's manager at the time that the tax authorities suspected the firm of having “deliberately shielded the company from the assessment and partial payment of the valued-added tax...and all of the corporation tax due in relation to the final tax assessments for 31st December 2006 and 2007”. In other words, there was a suspicion of VAT and corporation tax fraud.
A year later the judgement of the commercial court in Paris noted that the “repayment of back taxes” for VAT reached “€981,432 for the period July 1st, 2006, to December 31st, 2007”. At this time Faouzi Lamdaoui had a work contract as “logistics director” with Alpha that was earning him between 7,000 and 8,000 euros gross a month, according to documents seen by Mediapart.
Officially, Lamdaoui sold his shares in the company in December 2006, in other words just five months after Alpha Distributions was set up. However, this sale was only registered with the clerk of the commercial court in February 2009, and in fact is the final document filed by the company before its compulsory liquidation. Moreover, though Lamdaoui was supposedly no longer a shareholder in the company, he continued to feature as a shareholder on the company's official minutes dating from 2007 and 2008. This last year was in fact a hectic one for shareholders' meetings as, following the departure of its first boss, Alpha Distributions changed its manager three times in thirty days.
In the end, it was Alpha Distributions' final official boss M.B. (Mediapart is withholding his full name), born in 1925, who was criticised by the commercial court in 2010 for having “disposed of accounting documents, for not having kept the books when obliged to by law, or having kept accounts that are fictitious, manifestly incomplete or irregular”. Some of the facts he was criticised for dated from before his appointment, but nonetheless he was banned from running a company for seven years in terms that, curiously, recall a previous judgement by the court that was later overturned on appeal.
That case dates from 1998 and directly targeted Faouzi Lamdaoui. It involved a company called Starter SARL - a Société à responsabilité limitée is a limited company – which provided a courier service and delivered parcels. Lamdaoui became the company's shareholder and manager in 1992. But after a few months the company was put into compulsory liquidation and legal proceedings were started. According to the commercial court in Paris “around 1,051,224 F [francs]” - about 160,000 euros – were missing from the company's tills.
In its judgement dated June 8th, 1998, a copy of which has been seen by Mediapart, the court criticised the two last managers of the company, one of them Lamdaoui, for having “kept fictitious accounts or having disposed of the legal entity's accounts documents or having failed to keep the accounts in conformity with the legal rules”, and of having “failed to have declared insolvency within the deadline of 15 days” and of not having “worked to ensure the smooth functioning of the [judicial] proceedings”. Neither of the two co-managers appeared at the court. Faouzi Lamdaoui and his fellow manager were declared personally bankrupt for a period of 15 years. This is a particularly severe penalty which stops a person from running a company during that period and gives them a police record.
But a year later François Hollande's future advisor was cleared by the court of appeal. One reason given was that the court judged that the original court summons could not have reached Lamdaoui because he had moved address. Another reason was that Faouzi Lamdaoui had only been a manager and a shareholder at Starter for a few months. Despite the problems that were already apparent at the company, this fact had not been taken into account in the original proceedings, the court of appeal said.
“In conclusion, there is no justification for a personal punishment in relation to M. Lamdaoui,” stated the court of appeal on December 17th, 1999. From that date the socialist activist would never appear officially as the manager of the limited companies that he created and of which he was the director of logistics or director of technical affairs and sales. “M. Lamdaoui brings in business; he never deals with the management side,” says his lawyer Ardavan Amir-Aslani. “If [the company's] business turns bad or is run by amateurs, M. Lamdaou has nothing to do with that.”
Hollande's 'partner in crime'
The police investigators are also interested in Alpha, a company created in 2008 which ceased trading on June 30th, 2012 and which was ultimately wound down in March 2014. Lamdaoui was a shareholder and an employee. During its existence this limited company changed its name - to Cronoservice - and also its registered address, its shareholders and even its functions. Lamdaoui continued to be its shareholder and one of its executives until December 31st, 2011. In the previous year, 2010, the company only had two declared members of staff and a substantial turnover of 390,000 euros. This was on the back of a particularly impressive 2009 when it turned over 610,100 euros. These figures come from the only sets of accounts ever filed by the company. In the summer of 2011 Faouzi Lamdaoui's payslips showed him earning 6,700 euros a month gross as Cronoservice's 'logistics director'.
By 2011 Faouzi Lamdaoui was already heavily involved in François Hollande’s campaign in the Socialist Party's primary election to be the party's official presidential candidate. He was in charge of press relations, went on all trips and was permanently at the candidate's side. L'Express magazine wrote at the time: “Faouzi Lamdaoui is the candidate's shadow. It's he who goes to fetch him at his Parisian home in the morning. It's he who brings his suits, who looks after his appointments at the hairdresser, who books a motorbike taxi. 'A very efficient organiser,' says a grateful Hollande.” At the end of October 2011 Lamdaoui was named head of Hollande's private office for the presidential campaign itself. “He is always available,” noted the magazine. “How does he do it? Lamdaoui is a logistics engineer. Where? 'I'd prefer not to say, so I don't cause problems for my company',” he told L'Express.
The socialist activist does not talk to the media about the businesses that he has helped set up. Nor does he point out that since 1992 he has officially declared his work status as that of a self-employed professional, an “advisor on public relations and communication”.
It was only in a book (see right) by journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Derniers carnets – Scènes de la vie politique en 2012 (et avant) ('Final notebooks – scenes from political life in 2012 (and before)'), that this close ally of Hollande gave another version of his working life in which this time he implied he was in fact his own boss. “I had a small logistics consultancy. I let it all go, I only work now for François, dealing with everything, the press, the driving and all the rest. I do all I can. I believed in him so much, I put all my savings into the primary campaign.”
Faouzi Lamdaoui was already the subject of two legal complaints at this period. The first, over allegedly working on the black, was made in 2009 by Mohamed Belaïd who worked several months alongside Lamdaoui and who, among others, was the future president of the Republic's driver. For a long time no one – or hardly anyone – gave credence to Belaïd's claims, and Lamdaoui and his allies did all they could to discredit and threaten him, even suggesting he was mad, according to the driver's lawyer Nicolas Cellupica. The authorities decided not to pursue his complaint, though an appeal against that decision is due this September.
It is on the evidence of a second complaint, this one made by Mohamed Belaïd's former wife, Naïma, that the investigations are continuing today. Naïma Belaïd accuses Faouzi Lamdaoui of the unauthorised use of her name in nominating her as manager of the company Alpha. This complaint also dates from 2009 and lay dormant in police files for three years. It was only in 2012 that Naïma Belaïd was interviewed by officers, before the opening of a preliminary investigation in 2013.
In addition to Alpha Distributions and Alpha/Cronoservice, the investigators could also decide to look into Alphas, a company initially called ABS Services, which was set up in 1997. According to documents seen by Mediapart, Lamdaoui was employed there in 1999, 2004, 2005 and 2006, before the business disappeared in 2011, without ever having filed any accounts. Meanwhile another company, Alpha SVE, set up in 1999, and registered at the same address as Alpha and Alpha Distributions, employed Lamdaoui in 2000 before going out of business in 2004. Even further back there was also a limited company called Alpha Services for whom Lamdaoui was an employee in 1997 and 1999.
Somewhere, buried in this maze of short-lived companies with similar names, there is both a link and a consistent pattern. The link is Faouzi Lamdaoui; out of the eight different companies examined there is not one for which he has not been a shareholder, a manager and/or an employee. As for the pattern, that can be found in a three-stage operating method that was carried out on five occasions. It all starts with the creation of a limited company, sometimes with Faouzi Lamdaoui as the main shareholder, sometimes a member of his family. A short time later comes the next stage, when Hollande's future advisor is hired by the company. But by the time of the third stage – when the business stops trading - Lamdaoui has already left, having sold the shares that he owns, and has created another company which, in its turn, will hire him then later disappear. This went on until January 2012 when he was formally employed by the association that financed François Hollande's election campaign. Since May 2012 Faouzi Lamdaoui has been on the state payroll as an advisor at the Elysée.
Enlargement : Illustration 5
In fact, Lamdaoui had hoped to enter the French Parliament in 2012 during the parliamentary elections held in June of that year. First of all he hoped to be the Socialist Party's candidate in the ninth constituency for overseas French voters. However, eventually this position was given to Pouria Amirshahi, an ally of then party first secretary Martine Aubry. Then, on May 15th, 2012, Lamdaoui was lined up for a seat at Abbeville-Amiens in the north of France. However the very next day it was announced that the PS's candidate would instead be Pascale Boistard, an assistant mayor under the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë. In each case the decision to replace Lamdaoui with someone else was interpreted as an act of revenge by Aubry, who had not only been beaten by Hollande in the race to be the party's presidential candidate but had also been overlooked as prime minister by the new president.
The resignations of budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac last year and more recently Aquilino Morelle caused considerable political damage to President Hollande, not least because as a candidate he had promised to preside over an “exemplary” Republic. The current investigation into Faouzi Lamdaoui now targets someone from Hollande's inner circle. At the Elysée itself Lamdaoui is sometimes jokingly described as François Hollande's “partner in crime”, but this refers less to his current role as an advisor and more to his shared history with Hollande stretching back to the early 2000s.
That closeness and long association may help explain why Lamdaoui has survived so long as an advisor, given that many others have been reshuffled and given the serious nature of the investigation. When questioned by Mediapart about the police investigation the Elysée gave a formal and somewhat mysterious statement: “The preliminary investigation which has been opened into the companies at which M. Faouzi Lamdaoui worked in the past must be conducted according to the rules laid out in law, that is to say by respecting without reservation the presumption of innocence and ensuring that, while waiting for a decision at the end of the investigation, absolutely no intervention hinders the expression of the truth.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter