“Do you have the slightest evidence that our positions may have been influenced in any way by obtaining a loan from a Czech-Russian bank? The answer is no!” an annoyed Marine Le Pen told the Parliamentary commission of inquiry into foreign interference in May 2023.
The former president of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) repeated the point: the 9 million euro loan secured by her party in 2014 was concluded “with a bank” and not “with Vladimir Putin”, and it was done “without any quid pro quo”.
However, new documents obtained by Mediapart show that the pro-Russian stances of the man who negotiated that loan, former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, were indeed directly linked to money transfers from his Russian contacts.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In email exchanges in 2014 with the chief of staff of Alexandre Babakov – Vladimir Putin’s “international cooperation” advisor who facilitated the loan – the MEP estimated he needed “300,000 euros” to make pro-Russian speeches in particular at the European Parliament regarding the situation in Ukraine. Shortly afterwards, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser's foundation received the specific sum of 255,998 euros.
This amount was on top of the 140,000 euros in commission he had already received for negotiating the Russian loan, making a total of nearly 400,000 euros received by his foundation or himself. “I never received 400,000 euros personally for the Russian loan,” Jean-Luc Schaffhauser said in his defence, while not disputing that Russian funds were paid to his foundation.
Initial plan for a Russian loan to far-right party via the European Academy
To understand the background to these payments, we have to go back to 2013. At that time, the heavily-indebted Front National (FN) – it later changed its name to Rassemblement National (RN) - had been refused loans by French banks to fund its election campaigns. Its president Marine Le Pen then tasked international consultant Jean-Luc Schaffhauser with seeking a loan abroad. Plans with banks in Geneva (Switzerland) and Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) fell through.
The consultant then suggested turning to China, Iran or Russia. “Marine and I considered that Russia was without doubt the best option, because it is still Europe, and there's also this tradition of ties with Russia,” the former MEP later told the Parliamentary inquiry. In Moscow, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser had an extensive network of contacts, built through his work on behalf of French defence and aircraft group Dassault and oil giants Total, and his connections with Orthodox Church circles and Catholic group Opus Dei, of which he had been a member since 1980.
Among his special contacts was businessman and Russian senator Alexander Babakov, whom he met through the Orthodox Church in the 2000s, and with whom he shares the same vision of a broad-based Christian Europe. This former vice-president of the Russian Parliament, the Duma, had just gone up in the world: in 2012, he became President Putin's special representative for cooperation with Russian organisations abroad. It was he who would clear the path to unblocking the 9-million-euro loan for the Front National.
For months, negotiations continued with two of Alexander Babakov's employees: his chief of staff Alexander Vorobyev and another advisor, Mikhail Plisyuk.
In June 2014, the financial arrangements had still not been finalised. Initially, the plan was not to go through a bank and instead to channel the 9 million euros via the European Academy, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser's own foundation that campaigns for closer ties with Russia. Was this arrangement intended to obscure the Russian origins of the funds? Marine Le Pen did not respond on this point when questioned.
On June 29th 2014, the contract, a copy of which Mediapart has obtained, was ready to be signed. The MEP convened the Academy's board at his home in Strasbourg to approve the loan to the Front National and the inclusion of Alexandre Babakov's two employees in its ranks. They are referred to in the documents as “Russian 1” and “Russian 2”. The FN treasurer, Wallerand de Saint-Just, was present, as well as Mikhail Plisyuk. “Mr. Russian 2 states that he wishes the Academy to support the action of the Front National in France and Europe with the aim of seeing the emergence of a Europe of peoples and nations, enabling the construction of a balanced multipolar world,” read the minutes of the general assembly, obtained by Mediapart.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
When questioned about this meeting, Wallerand de Saint-Just played down its significance. “Schaffhauser was handling everything; he invited me, I came to meet people from the Academy, and nothing concrete came of it,” he said.
In fact, this route for obtaining a loan fell through: the Russians wanted to go through an offshore structure or via Cyprus, which the Front National refused to do. Ultimately, it was a bank – the First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB) – that lent the funds to the FN. The loan was signed on September 11th 2014, in Moscow.
Nearly 400,000 euros paid by a Luxembourg company
When, two months later, Mediapart revealed the existence of this Russian loan, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser complained that it jeopardised their “friendships and networks”, insisting that there was “nothing reprehensible” about the loan. The MEP was less forthcoming about the commission he received. It was 140,000 euros “with the agreement of the Front”, he eventually confirmed to the French news agency AFP. According to him, the sum was very different from his usual consulting fees, which are around “3,000 to 5,000 euros a day” and half of it had been consumed by travel and legal expenses.
According to Mediapart's information, the funds were transferred via a Latvian bank account belonging to the Luxembourg company West East Communication Group (WECG), a structure partly funded by a company based in the British Virgin Islands, Spencerdale Limited.
That is not the end of the story. Between October 2014 and June 2015, further payments arrived from the Luxembourg company into the coffers of the European Academy, with Babakov’s associates taking a stake in the foundation’s capital. The total amount was 255,998 euros. The Academy's capital, which had previously been around 10,000 euros, had suddenly skyrocketed.
Emails obtained by Mediapart establish a link between the funds received and the MEP’s subsequent political stances. Jean-Luc Schaffhauser wrote to Babakov’s chief of staff on October 5th 2014. In an email in English headed “What is the situation in eastern Ukraine?” he lamented the fact that only one voice was being heard, that of “America”, and outlined three areas in which work could be done to rectify this. These were: travelling to Ukraine to monitor elections organised by the separatists; writing books and playing a role in “reportage” to describe the situation on the ground; and speaking on the subject in the European Parliament during plenary sessions. “For all expenses,” he wrote, citing a “film” and a “day in plenary in November, February, June”, he estimated a sum of “300,000 euros”.
Two weeks later, the investment in the European Academy by the Russians was made official by email, with a membership fee of around 250,000 euros.
A speech in Parliament dictated by the Russians
What followed shows that the MEP kept his promises. On October 30th 2014, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser flew to the Donbass region in occupied eastern Ukraine as an observer of the elections organised by the separatists, with Kremlin support - but with the disapproval of the international community. He took part in a press conference, live broadcasts and “reports” on the “hidden side of the war in Ukraine” in which he “re-established the truth” against the “misinforming Western media” (see here, here and here). In situ, the MEP spared no efforts to legitimise those elections.
The propaganda operation was conducted with a small team linked to the Front National who secretly joined the trip: Nicolas Lesage – a friend of the party's vice president Louis Aliot who would become Marine Le Pen's chief of staff a few months later – and the party's video contractor accredited as a “journalist” from Nations Presse Info, a site then overseen by Louis Aliot. All this was done with the approval of the FN's vice-president, as shown by an email in which Lesage wrote to Schaffhauser that he had seen “Louis” the day before, “as planned”, and would call him “for some final adjustments and details”. He promised to deliver a “professional and attractive product”. The plane tickets were sent by a Babakov employee.
Six months later, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser returned to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine to organise a “forum” of European supporters of the separatists, this time accompanied by Emmanuel Leroy, a former adviser to Marine Le Pen.
Simultaneously, as promised to the Russians, he spoke in the European Parliament in November 2014, February, and June 2015 on the situation in Ukraine.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
This lobbying had begun as soon as he arrived at the European Parliament in July 2014, alongside the completion of the Russian loan. Twice, Babakov's chief of staff emailed him talking points to employ on the conflict in Ukraine, which the MEP used in his first plenary session speech, also forwarding them to Marine Le Pen and her international adviser. “Marine is ready to send a statement to Reuters [editor's note, the news agency], she needs one drawn up for her to finalise,” Jean-Luc Schaffhauser wrote to his parliamentary assistant on July 2nd.
This dinner was clearly an influence operation, inside European institutions.
He also offered reassurances to his Russian contacts, whom he sometimes referred to as his “friends”: he copied them in on certain exchanges with parliamentary colleagues, sent them his statements, promised they would be translated into English, and said that the video of his speech in the chamber would soon be online “on the European Parliament's website”. On July 22nd, he organised a dinner debate at the Renaissance Hotel in Brussels with Mikhail Plisyuk, Alexander Vorobyev, and the European Academy, under the heading: “Ukraine, information and disinformation but real civil war in Europe: what can Members of the European Parliament do?” A former assistant to Schaffhauser told Mediapart: “This dinner was clearly an influence operation within the European institutions.”
The MEP was also asked to facilitate certain meetings. On July 30th 2014 Paul Chachkin, secretary to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as a member of the European Academy and advisor to Babakov, wrote to inform him that Babakov was finalising financial matters. He also requested the MEP's help in organising a meeting with former French foreign minister Michèle Alliot-Marie and a meeting between President Putin and a cardinal in Poland. Jean-Luc Schaffhauser replied that they first had to finalise the loan.
Perhaps I should have asked the CIA, the Russian secret services, or the Soros Foundation for resources?
Contacted by Mediapart, the MEP took refuge behind the activities of the European Academy, whose membership included Babakov's advisors and some of his parliamentary assistants, he said. Regarding his interventions at the European Parliament, he “stands by the relevance of the points and the choice of them, the quality of my sources, and the consistency of my analyses over time”. Questioned about the origin of the funds received, he retorted: “What do you know about the origin of Mediapart's funds?” He added: “Perhaps I should have asked the CIA, the Russian secret services, or the Soros Foundation for resources? Your question implies there was an adoption of stances in favour of Russian interests, that's your analysis and yours alone!” (see details in our black box below).
When contacted for comment, Alexandre Babakov, Mikhail Plisyuk, and Alexander Vorobyev did not respond. In the United States, these three are accused by prosecutors of having, between 2012 and 2017, used the Institute of International Integration Studies that they operate as a front for an influence and disinformation operation in the United States, carrying out anti-Ukrainian propaganda efforts aimed at members of Congress.
Enlargement : Illustration 4
Questioned by Mediapart on these issues, Marine Le Pen did not respond. Speaking to the Parliamentary commission of inquiry the former RN president had attempted to distance herself from Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, describing him as a “very independent man” over whom she had, she claimed, “no authority” and with whom she had “often disagreed”. She insisted she was “absolutely unaware” of the talking points sent by the Russians to the MEP – despite the email having been forwarded to her – and eventually conceded that “having a speech written for me did not seem worthy of a national representative”. In 2022, she clarified to Mediapart that she had issued “no such statement”.
She did not, however, condemn the MEP's election observer missions in Donbass. “I believe that each MEP has the right to go wherever they want. [...] In this case, Mr Schaffhauser did not tell me he was going and did not ask for my permission, and even if he had asked, it wasn't down to me to grant it,” she said. However, the MEP told us that she was “aware” of his trip, and Louis Aliot himself had admitted that he was “informed of the project” – although he insisted he was “not involved”.
It will be up to the French justice system to determine whether Jean-Luc Schaffhauser – who benefits from the presumption of innocence – is guilty of corruption. In 2016, following an alert from the anti-money laundering unit Tracfin, the financial crimes prosecution service, the Parquet National Financier (PNF), opened a preliminary investigation into the sums received by the MEP's organisations after securing the Russian loan.
Aside from any criminal aspect, there are also ethical questions arising from the politician's actions. As an MEP, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser was subject to the European Parliament's code of conduct, which obliges each member to disclose their remunerations in their declaration of interests, to act “solely in the public interest” without obtaining – or attempting to obtain – “any direct or indirect financial benefit or other reward in exchange for influencing, or voting on, legislation, motions for a resolution, written declarations or questions tabled in Parliament”, and to “consciously seek to avoid any situation which might imply bribery or corruption”. In particular, this code prohibits members from entering into agreements “to act or vote in the interest of any other legal or natural person that would compromise their voting freedom”.
In his successive declarations of interests at the institution, Schaffhauser had claimed that the “exercise of my international consultancy functions had ended in June 2014”. The checks carried out then, at the request of the Parliament's president, resulted in no sanctions against him.
At the time, the MEP had denied to Mediapart that there was any “conflict of interest”, insisting that his commission of 140,000 euros was for “work that had taken place well before my election”. Eight years later, addressing the Parliamentary commission of inquiry, and just seconds after taking the oath, he stated that “there [had] been no external interference” and highlighted his long-standing relationship with Russia which “did not start because I became an MEP”, as well as his “hundred or so” visits there. “In this matter, I have nothing to feel bad about,” he insisted. “My consultancy work has existed since 1982, I didn't come out of nowhere, I am president of the European Academy which has handled the largest contracts for Total, Dassault, Snecma. There has never been any issues concerning me; everything has always been done properly.”
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter