With the arrangement of financial gains for his wife and the appointement of his son to a job paid from public funds, the revelations this week concerning Richard Ferrand, barely a week into his post as newly-elected president Emmanuel Macron’s minister for “territorial cohesion”, are so obviously similar to the scandal that sunk conservative presidential candidate François Fillon that Ferrand cannot hope to come through the growing controversy in one piece.
François Fillon, initially tipped by polls as the frontrunner by far in the presidential election campaign, never recovered from the subsequent scandal over the suspected fraudulent employment of his wife for many years as his parliamentary assistant – a role, it is alleged, she never performed – and also, for a lesser period, two of his children, which in all cost the public purse nigh on 1 million euros.
It is not illegal for an MP to employ family members, as long as they actually complete the job they are paid for. But following the Fillon scandal, public outrage at the favouritism, coupled with the suspicions of fraud, has prompted calls for the practice to be outlawed.
For adding to Ferrand’s discomfort is the dilemma for Macron’s new government, which has promised to present a bill of law to enforce probity in public office before France takes to the polls again in June for parliamentary elections, and which cannot be seen to be woolly on an issue concerning one of its own, even if the accusations against Ferrand are in part not of the same nature nor of the intensity of the scandal surrounding Fillon.
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But the facts are there, strongly resembling a return episode of the sorry saga that for three months dogged the presidential election campaign. Firstly, there is the origin of the information: as in the case of Fillon, it was the investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné which revealed the story. Then there are the similar central characters, a wife and child, and lastly the justifications of the accused; “there was nothing illegal” insists Ferrand, as did Fillon, while Ferrand also claimed that “there is nothing immoral” about his actions, which only makes the situation for his political camp all the more difficult, especially when he proclaimed that “if the situation came about again, I wouldn’t hire my son”, a remark that echoes Fillon’s comments on the employment of his wife Penelope. “I no doubt became a target because of my high-profile [political] engagement, and my recent appointment,” said Ferrand, 54, a Socialist Party MP who joined Macron’s centrist En Marche! movement last year as its secretary-general. “But my conscience is clear.”
Fillon went a step further, claiming that he was the victim of a political plot to sabotage his presidential bid organised by what he, and the rightwing weekly Valeurs actuelles, claimed was a secret cell working for socialist president François Hollande. But other than that, the words uttered by Fillon and Ferrand are the same.
What is shocking, and which will unfortunately fuel demagogic simplifications along the line that politicians are “all rotten”, is how being caught red-handed is what strikes politicians. A scandal, or some small connivance, only offends them when it is made public by the press. It is not the dubious dealings that bother them, it is the light that is shone on them. Since the Fillon scandal broke in January, so many of them repeat that politicians must stop employing family members “because the public no longer tolerates it”, and not because the practice is shocking in itself. Nor is it recognised that many people were simply unaware of the existence of these cosy arrangements.
Ferrand is off to a bad start because he behaved badly, and also because comments he made in an interview in February have now come back to haunt him in a cruel and laughable manner. Interviewed about the Fillon scandal on RMC radio on February 23rd, Ferrand, as secretary general of Macron’s movement, spoke about the legislation it would introduce once in government to ensure the probity of political life. Among the measures, which he added would also apply to the movement’s candidates in June’s parliamentary elections, would be “the commitment not to hire one’s spouse or children when serving a public post”, said Ferrand.
So much for the prosecution case. But his denigrators, beginning with the conservative Les Républicains party’s vocifirous MP Éric Ciotti (who was a staunch supporter of Fillon) and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, would do well to consider twice before sharpening their knives. Concerning the employment of his son, Ferrand hired him for a period of four months and paid him the minimum legal wage. Whereas Fillon employed his wife – and arranged for her employment by his successor as MP, as well as also for uncertain work on a magazine owned by a billionaire friend – over a period of 25 years, when she was at certain times paid more than the MP she worked for, work for which she and her husband have had great difficulty in providing evidence of.
According to Le Canard enchaîné, in 2011 Ferrand, as managing director of a mutual health insurance company in Brittany, chose to rent premises for its new health centre from a property company before it had been established on the company registry list, and which, when it was established, was headed by his wife Sandrine. At the time, Ferrand was not yet an MP, and the events involved the private sector and private funds, whereas Fillon as an MP employed his wife out of public funds. So, beyond the high media profile of the case, the only connection between the Fillon scandal and that surrounding Ferrand is the electoral concordance: one was a candidate for the presidency and was defeated, while the other was a supporter of his rival, who won.
That said, and underlined, the short cut made between the two situations highlights a new reality to which the Right and the far-right would do well to ponder. To demand the resignation of a minister on the basis of what was a legal, and unfortunately common, practice in the private sector, which occurred before his involvement in national politics, is an innovation. It would be to establish that there is only one moral rule in France, which would be revolutionary. Almost every day one hears that virtue in money matters is an absolute requirement in the public sector because it involves public funds, which are paid for in our taxes, while the private sector is not concerned by these demands. The private sector can do what it wants, when it wants, because it involves the private sector’s money.
Thus, a, elected representative can be prosecuted for misuse of public funds, but we are expected to say nothing when the head of a company relocates a business abroad, making its staff redundant, after it has received public aid. And however much we might find it lamentable when a CEO is paid an outrageous salary, or receives a huge bonus even when they have badly managed their company, they can nevertheless wash their hands of the situation at the same time as filling their pockets. It is, apparently, a matter only for the board of directors, as in the case of Ferrand’s wife. Virtue, then, should be an imperative in the public sector, but optional in the private sector, as if there were two moral codes within the same country.
That is what Éric Ciotti or his conservative colleague Christian Jacob call into question (without realizing it) when they demand that the financial crime section of the public prosecutor’s office open an investigation into the property rental agreement between Ferrand’s wife and the board of the Mutuelles de Bretagne. They are calling for, without knowing it, not only the probing of the employment of family members by MPs, but also the financial reward of family members wherever it occurs, in all the businesses in France, and the prosecution of excesses of all sorts everywhere, and every day, in the private sector. Welcome to the club!
We can hardly wait for them to propose a bill of law to moralise economic activity.
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The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse