Mathieu Gallet is not someone who is averse to luxury. The Shangri-La Dubaï, the Sofitel Washington, the Tour Hassan in Rabat … you could forgiven for thinking you were flicking through an upmarket travel magazine. Instead this is the list detailed by France's audit body the Cour des Comptes of some of the places that Gallet, now head of public broadcaster Radio France, stayed at while he was head of France's audiovisual archives the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) from 2010 to 2014.
“Mr Gallet sometimes stayed in some high-class, even luxury hotels,” notes the organisation in its provisional report on the running of the INA from 2007 to 2014, a provisional report which has been sent to interested parties for comments, and a copy of which has been seen by Mediapart.
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This provisional report naturally mentions the now infamous taxi bills run up by Gallet's successor Agnès Saal, fares which cost her not just her job but also led to her prosecution and a fine and suspended jail sentence. But its toughest passages are reserved for Mathieu Gallet who finds himself criticised both for his day-to-day expenditure on receptions and work trips and for a series of consultancy contracts that were awarded under him. Some of these contracts were never put out to competitive tender, and some were, in the words of the report, awarded by procedures that were sometimes “inappropriate, even irregular”. One of the recipient of these contracts was consultant Denis Pingaud, whom Gallet took with him to Radio France.
These consultancy contracts are already the object of a preliminary criminal investigation over suspicions of “favouritism” that was opened by prosecutors at Créteil, south-east Paris, after they were alerted by the Ministry of Culture. Mathieu Gallet has already been questioned in custody over the affair. However, this report by an expert at the quasi-judicial Cour des Comptes is the first time that a financial judge has expressed his or her opinion on the compliance with – or not – of public procurement rules under Gallet's stewardship of the INA.
Gallet received a copy of the Cour des Comptes' “provisional findings” several weeks ago and now has to respond in writing to the claims, as has Agnès Saal and the INA itself. The Cour des Comptes will then issue its final report. Contacted by Mediapart, Gallet's lawyer Christophe Ingrain said his client did not want to comment. “We reserve our observations for the Cour des Comptes,” he said. The lawyer added that the provisional report was “strictly confidential” and that “divulging its contents is forbidden and punished by … the criminal code”.
For a year the April 2015 revelations around the misuse of funds by Agnès Saal – the sum involved was 23,788 euros – have eclipsed Mathieu Gallet's expenditure on high-class hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants and mini bars. As chairman and CEO of INA, Gallet was already well paid for what is a relatively modest institution whose role is to highlight France's radio and television archives, earning around 185,000 euros in 2013. As the police had already seized possession of a number of bills in the course of their investigation into alleged favouritism, the Cour des Comptes report restricts its comments to the years 2013 and 2014. Nonetheless it still found plenty to say.
The report notes that the money spent on receptions by Mathieu Gallet at the INA amounted to 61,063 euros between 2012 and April 2014, or “an average of more than 2,300 euros a month, which seems very large for an establishment of the INA's size”. By way of comparison Agnès Saal claimed 546 euros in catering expenses in her first eight months. Taxi fares excepted, “she must have done in ten months what Mr Gallet was doing in one month” the INA's accountant told the police in 2015, according to witness statements seen by Mediapart.
The Cour des Comptes also highlights some of the gastronomic meals for which Mathieu Gallet was reimbursed at the INA's expense: 187 euros for two people at the Plaza Athénée in Paris and 614 euros “with no details on the numbers” at the two-Michelin-star Taillevent restaurant in Paris in March 2012. The meal allowances at INA are, in theory, capped at 30 euros per person.
As for accommodation expenses, on top of the foreign hotels already mentioned the report refers to “a room at the Carlton in Cannes at 660 euros a night” and another room for 420 euros at the Paris hotel in Biarritz, both in 2012.
As investigative news weekly Le Canard enchaîné had already revealed, soon after his arrival at the INA Mathieu Gallet decided to spruce up his two offices, one at the institute's headquarters at Bry-sur-Marne east of Paris, and the other in Paris, in which he had a parquet floor laid down. The audit body found the 73,500 euro pre-tax cost of the renovation works, which included plumbing, to be “appropriate”, but it highlighted the 64,000-euro additional cost for furniture. Without making a judgement on the appropriateness of these purchases, the report's author shows his astonishment: “[These purchases] took place from the company Silvera (avenue Kléber in the 16th arrondissement) which is identified with certain top of the range products. The price of furniture such as sofas and armchairs seems quite high.” In 2015 Mathieu Gallet was also criticised for the cost of renovating his new office at Radio France but was cleared by the government audit body the Inspection Générale des Finances.
In the end, the Cour des Comptes never suggests that this workplace lifestyle involves anything illegal, but does note that the INA is a public body “subject to an obligation of exemplariness, still more so in a period marked by restrictions on financial resources”.
'An organisation that is not very rigorous'
While Mathieu Gallet was chairman and CEO of the INA, the contracts entered into for communication and strategic advice cost a total of 1.7 million euros. Some of these were awarded after a tender process – for example to consultancy firms Publicis and Roland Berger Strategy – while others were awarded without a competitive pitch, for example to consultant Denis Pingaud and Bernard Spitz Conseil. These contracts were all handed out despite the fact the INA already had people internally who were able to perform these tasks, in particular in its communications department, and the fact that a contract signed by Gallet's predecessor with consultants Euro-RSCG ran until 2011. Overall the Cour des Comptes' provisional report considers the use of these outside services to be “frequent and very expensive”. The details, in particular, raise questions.
As it is described as a public establishment of an industrial and commercial nature – an EPIC in the jargon – INA is not subject to the administrative code on public procurement but is instead governed by a 2005 decree which requires a tender process to take place if the cost of a particular service exceeds 207,000 euros. Below that it is the institute's own internal rules that apply, which require publicity and competitive pitches once a certain level of spending is reached. There is thus always a temptation to get around the restrictions by dividing the contracts up into smaller deals.
The Cour des Comptes report notes that advice was ordered from consultant Denis Pingaud continuously for four years without any competitive pitch process taking place. This consultancy advice was first provided through polling and marketing firm OpinionWay where Pingaud was number two, at a cost of 116,00 euros in 2010 and 2011, then via his personal company Balises between 2012 and June 2014 at a cost of 130,000 euros. Among the recurring functions of Mathieu Gallet's preferred consultant were: “Supporting, monitoring the image, and reflecting on the speeches and positioning of the chairman.” In May 2015 Le Canard Enchaîné revealed details of a confidential report written by a tax inspector at the French finance ministry, indicating that contracts had “gone through irregularly” - claims that were immediately denied by Mathieu Gallet.
In respect of the work awarded to OpinionWay, the Cour des Comptes considers that the contracts “should have led to an advert on the ina.fr website, a written consultation and at least three estimates”. As the bill exceeded the level of 100,000 euros, the “purchasing department should have been called in”.
According to the report, the situation was worse in the period 2012 to 2014. “The recurrence of contracts with the same business should have led the INA to question the similarity of the services,” says the report. Had there been a desire to salami down the services in order to avoid spending thresholds that triggered the application of other rules? In any case the Cour des Comptes says it regrets that the INA did not make use of the official publication for such public tenders, the 'Bulletin officiel des annonces des marchés publics', did not issue a written consultation containing “specifications” for the work, and so on.
“The services ordered [via Balises] do not seem to have been in response to an undeniable need on the part of the INA,” adds the report's author, who recalls that Agnès Saal had, on her arrival, ended the institute's connection with Denis Pingaud. To show proof of the services that he had provided in 2013 at a cost of 50,000 euros, the 'spin doctor' provided the Cour des Comptes with a simple “two-and-a-half page note”. In 2014, meanwhile, some people inside the INA suspected that Pingaud had been 'coaching' Mathieu Gallet in his bid to become head of Radio France. The provisional report does not itself come to a conclusion on this but it cites an account of his activities written by Denis Pingaud himself, which contains the following mission statement: “Internal communication to manage Mr Gallet's candidacy for Radio France.”
Another company, called Chrysalis Conseil, also attracted the auditors' attention. This consultancy was paid 144,170 euros for contracts between 2012 and 2014, without the INA being able to show that the work had been the subject of a competitive pitch. At the very least, the report notes, these successive contracts “should have led to an advert on the ina.fr website, a consultation and at least three estimates”. In 2013 and 2014 Chrysalis advised the INA in particular on a reform of its management of archive collections that have never seen the light of day, work for which the institute had recruited in parallel another company in the context of a tender process that was carried out according to the proper form. The Cour des Comptes says that the “detachment” of the Chrysalis contracts from the tender process “makes the way they were handled irregular”.
In a summary paragraph that relates to all the companies retained outside the competitive bid process by INA during the Gallet era, the Cour des Comptes says: “The internal and external controls show in retrospect that the choice of procedures was inappropriate, even irregular.”
The watchdog's criticisms do not end there. In looking at work that was carried out after a tender process, the Cour des Comptes raises questions over contracts signed with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, a German firm with an international reputation which nonetheless cost the INA 529,000 euros over three years. While two contracts were awarded in an absolutely normal way, the audit body found that an “additional clause” and an “additional contract” were added without a new competitive pitch process taking place.
“The reasons for the signing of a new additional clause and an additional contract are not convincing,” says the report. In fact, the 2005 decree that covers the award of such contracts poses conditions before any additional contract can be signed without observing the usual formalities: there need to be “unforeseen circumstances” and above all the sums involved must be below 50% of the original contract figure. Yet in this case the Cour des Comptes sees nothing unforeseeable that would have justified the new deals, and notes that by adding together the cost of the additional contract (50% of the original) and the additional clause (10.6% of the original), which were signed on the same day, the overall additional cost was 60.6% of the original deal.
Overall, when it comes to the contracts awarded after a tender process – including one awarded before Mathieu Gallet's arrival – the Cour des Comptes' judgement is severe: “The definition of needs does not seem to have been grasped … some items are missing … which allows a doubt to linger over the regularity [of the contracts]. These incomplete files for some financially very important deals show an organisation that is not very rigorous.”
The Cour des Comptes' definitive conclusions, which are expected this summer, could feed into the ongoing judicial inquiry into the award of contracts at the INA, an investigation in which one of the complainants is the anti-corruption organisation Anticor. If there were considered to be grounds to do so, these conclusions could also lead to proceedings before the special administrative court the Cour de Discipline Budgétaire et Financière (CDBF) which can hand out fines for irregularities committed in the management of public money.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter.