At about 11pm on Friday May 5th, Emmanuel Macron left the offices of Mediapart in east-central Paris where he had taken part in a filmed interview, lasting more than two hours, about his political programme. At about the same moment, the social media began buzzing about what became dubbed “the Macron Leaks”, which was the publication on a website of links to thousands of hacked documents from macron’s political movement En Marche ! (On the move).
In record time, the contents of the documents were publicly relayed by American far-right groups and networks supporting Donald Trump, followed in France by the far-right Front National, whose leader Marine Le Pen was to face Macron two days later in the second and knockout round of the French presidential elections. Macron’s movement soon confirmed the “massive” hacking of its internal documents, and warned that the data dump that Friday evening also contained falsified information.
The aim of the leaks was clearly to destabilize the election, an operation that Mediapart denounced. The amount of data was huge, unverified and the identity of the hackers was unknown. Mediapart began by investigating the source of the leaks, and notably a lead which pointed to a Russian connection.
But the hacked information, however sinister was the source of the leaks, was also potentially, at least in part, of public interest, on the absolute condition that it was independently verified and authenticated, and that the facts that might emerge were presented to those concerned by the documents in order that they could comment on the information. The following day, May 6th, Mediapart journalists and technical staff began investigating the leaked data. This included the use of technical research tools that were employed by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) journalistic consortium, of which Mediapart is a partner, in the joint investigations of the vast data leaks that were behind the Football Leaks and Malta Files revelations.
After two weeks of enquiries, verifications and efforts to contact and interview the parties concerned by the pertinent information which emerged, Mediapart decided to publish some of that information, which partly includes extracts from several of the hacked documents. Our investigations also include documents and interviews gathered from our coverage of the presidential election campaign.
This article, a result of our investigations, reveals the fundraising operations of Macron’s presidential election campaign and his centrist En Marche! movement created in early 2016 to support his bid. On May 15th, Mediapart contacted dozens of people involved in the fundraising, including En Marche ! staff, financial donors and fundraising scouts. Many failed to respond to our requests for interviews. They were again contacted by Mediapart on May 17th, when we also, beyond individual cases, addressed a series of questions to the communications team at En Marche ! to give it the opportunity to comment on the information. Once again, Mediapart received no response.
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The email was dated February 13th 2017. “As you can see, our start-up continues to plough on! Just as we are about to enter the ‘rough’ in the days ahead, we need support more than ever,” it read. The start-up in question was no ordinary one, and the man who wrote it, Christian Dargnat, was no ordinary commercial manager.
Dargnat is a former CEO of BNP-Paribas Asset Management. In April 2016, he swapped his career in finance to organise “on a voluntary basis”, as he put it, the financing of Emmanuel Macron’s presidential election campaign. Over many months he was busy chasing wealthy donors, holding discreet meetings and confidential dinner parties, in full coordination with the new French president.
The February 13th email was addressed to Olivier Berggruen, a New York-based American-German art historian and curator, a key figure in the art world and the son of the late art collector Heinz Berggruen. The day following that email from Dargnat, Berggruen replied with a pledge to give 4,000 euros to Macron’s fledgling movement En Marche! (On The Move) and another 4,000 euros to the candidate. The total was transferred by bank order 48 hours later.
A study of the thousands of emails and documents that were contained in the so-called Macron Leaks, along with other documents obtained by Mediapart during the presidential election campaign, illustrate how Emmanuel Macron’s inner circle succeeded in collecting vast funds between April 2016 and April 2017, and which were essential to his election as president barely one year after setting up his campaign movement.
Dargnat and his campaign team colleagues did their best to dismiss Macron’s image as a candidate backed by business and finance, insisting instead on the small donors who helped fund his bid. But in reality, it was a group of merchant bankers who were behind the remarkable fundraising for the maverick political newcomer, strenuously milking their networks and contacts in France and abroad.
The strategy was based on simple calculations, as set out in a short message written by Dargnat in September 2016, shortly after Macron had quit his post as then-president François Hollande’s economy minister. “When we know that presidential election campaign spending is limited to 22 million euros, and that we could take out a bank loan (for up to 9 million euros), refunded if the candidate exceeds the 5% [of the vote] mark in the elections, we are left with finding 13 million [euros],” he wrote, adding: “If we round down the budget we have to find at 10 million, we must therefore obtain donations from 1,333 people at 7,500 euros each” – the latter sum being the French legal maximum a donor can give to a movement in an election campaign.
The fundraising among wealthy supporters began in the spring of 2016, well before Macron stood down from government on August 30th. Dargnat’s team included Emmanuel Miquel, a senior investment manager with asset management company Ardian (and formerly with US bank JPMorgan Chase), who acted as treasurer of the association – as it was technically – managing the Macron campaign financing. There were also two other former students, like Dargnat and Miquel, of the elite HEC French business school; Stanislas Guerini, a director of customer relations with professional clothing and hygienic products supplier Elis, who will stand for election as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Macron’s party in legislative elections in June. The other is Cédric O (his last name is made up of just one letter), a production plant director with aero engine manufacturer Safran and formerly a member of the ministerial cabinet of former French finance minister Pierre Moscovici, (now European commissioner for economic and financial affairs). Cédric O, a media-shy and highly capable member of the team, acted as the Macron campaign’s financial agent responsible for the reception and registering of donations and managing campaign spending.
This small group worked towards establishing, within a year, a wide circle of wealthy donors, made up mainly of urban, highly-qualified top-earners, graduates of France’s elite higher education schools and institutions. This core network of funders contrasts sharply with the image, put about by Macron’s En Marche! communications team, that the campaign coffers were filled by a wave of spontaneous donations from the ordinary public.
The wealthy donors are remindful of the rich elite who partly financed Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign, and who were enrolled into his UMP party’s club known as the “Premier Cercle” (First Circle). The Macron camp has dismissed such comparisons, insisting that it never organised social gatherings like those of the Premier Cercle – which is quite true because they were far more discreet.
Among the leaked emails from the Macron campaign is one containing a working document dated April 2016, setting out the strategy for finding donors. At that time, the movement had only just been created, and had gathered about 400,000 euros in funds – in both cash and in pledges – of which 95% were from major donors who had handed over the maximum legal 7,500 euros each (the equivalent of more than six times the minimum legal wage in France). The fundraising committee was planning to launch a major appeal for funds via a network of entrepreneurs, bankers, lawyers, lobbyists and other “influencers”.
Over the months to come, the potential donors were to be invited to dozens of dinners and lunches organised around France and also abroad, most often in the presence of the “chef” (the “chief”) as Macron was nicknamed by his campaign team. An internal document from the En March! staff warned that these events, which brought together a financial and social elite, were “very poorly thought of by certain categories of the population”. But they were also productive, and the Macron fundraising team received precious help from the well-healed supporters of his movement who opened their contacts books and even organised and hosted some of the events.
One lunch party in London in mid-April 2016, organised at the home of the financial director of an online sales outlet, raised a total of 281,250 euros according to one of the leaked En Marche! documents. Two weeks later, a cocktail-dinner reception in Paris raised about 78,000 euros in just an hour and a half. Importantly, the costs of these fundraising get-togethers were classed as “private expenses” for those who organised them, and were kept separate to the campaign spending accounts.
On June 1st 2016, Édouard Tétreau, a French business consultant, hosted one of the first major cocktail fundraising parties in Paris. Leaked notes about the event prepared by the campaign team read: “Duration: 1h30, including Emmanuel appearance 1h”, adding “Greetings 15min/speech 20 min/ Q&A 20min/ exit 5 min”. Some 30 guests were present, described in the notes as “non-CAC40 CEO forty-somethings” (the CAC 40 is France’s benchmark stock market index). A week later, Tétreau organised another similar event, this time for 32 guests described in the notes as being from “different circles (lawyers, consultants, lobbying, publishing etc)”. The note also underlined, with the word “Attention!”, that caution was needed because among those present would be “a partner of Image 7”, which is the name of a communications company run by Anne Méaux, communications advisor for former prime minister François Fillon, who was at the time preparing to run for his conservative Les Républicains party’s nomination as presidential election candidate (he went on to win the primaries in November).
Another of those who the Macron campaign fundraising team nicknamed “pilot fish” was Hélène Chardoillet, a development director for a medium-sized firm in the banking sector who was friendly with Astrid Panosyan, a former advisor to Macron when he was economy minister. “The people who I know and who I have begun approaching (five this past week) are of a centre-right political inclination, and their reaction in substance is the following,” she wrote in a warning to En Marche! treasurer Emmanuel Miquel in May 2016. She said they were concerned by the lack of clarity of Macron’s programme, the poor results of his term as economy minister, and the danger that his candidacy would become absorbed by then French president François Hollande (who many believed would stand as a candidate in the election before he finally backed off from making a bid). “My feeling, if we remain with the precise objective of fundraising, is that this target of the centre-right is not, not at all, ripe for donations,” continued Chardoillet. “Positioning, programme and demarcation from Hollande would be key elements in order that this target evolves.
Donors who sought a meeting with the minister
Three weeks later, Christian Dargnat, president of the “finance association” for Macron’s movement, wrote a message to his staff: “If you know people who wish to help the cause, don’t hesitate in leading them to me.” Shortly afterwards, Cédric O informed Dargnat that “one of my friends tells me that her boss would like to take part in one of our dinners”, the boss in question being the head of a mutual insurance company, adding: “I made clear that it is reserved for major donors J”. One month later Dargnat wrote to O to say that he had lunched with the managing director and public affairs director of the company. “Excellent contacts and big potential for networking,” he said. “Thanks again.”
Cédric O suggested inviting a company head he knew to one of the dinners in July. “I’m not certain that he will give [something], but he’s a very big driver for others (for dosh and in terms of networks),” he wrote. The man in question would later contribute 2,500 euros.
In June, Dargnat announced a new fundraising event: “We’re organizing on July 1st a lunch with E. Macron,” he wrote in an email to several contacts. “If you have people ready to contribute at 7.5 K€, send the contact details of those persons to Emmanuel Miquel and myself.”
On June 20th, Emmanuel Miquel sent a message out to his staff. “Friends, over the next two weeks we don’t have a dinner FR [in France],” he wrote. “With Christian we propose (re-)putting pressure on those who should have already given [donations] so that they give between now and the end of the week.” Miquel named seven targets, which he said were “a potential of 53K€ for this week”, a calculation based on the 7,500 euros legal maximum an individual can donate to a political movement. Ismaël Emelien, who was Macron’s closest advisor, and who now acts as special advisor to him as president, offered to phone some of them. The second-to-last name on the list, that of a CEO of a major French website group gave Emelien the impression that he was “not very keen” to donate, although “he helps a lot in terms of advice”.
Two months later another of the events was planned, bringing together 23 businessmen, including the head of a newly created investment firm, described as “très helpful” (sic), and another who figures in a list of France’s wealthiest individuals as compiled by financial weekly Challenges, who was said to be “fired up”.
In an email dated May 2nd, Julien Denormandie, another of Macron’s inner circle on the campaign, wrote to Sophie Ferracci, Macron’s chief-of-staff at the economy ministry: “Sophie, can you give us an update with the next dates?” At around the same time, Dargnat was trying to spread the fundraising net beyond Paris, and asked Emmanuel Miquel and Cédric O to find “people who can organise dinners” during the minister’s visits to towns around France. These included Orléans on May 8th, La Rochelle on May 9th, Toulouse on May 19th, La Grande-Motte on May 26th, Chalon-sur-Saône on May 30th, Rennes on June 20th, Annecy on June 23rd”. Apparently, the provincial dinner dates were not successful.
While he was still at the economy ministry, there was to be no question of Macron being publicly and directly involved in the handing over of donations. “While Emmanuel is minister, I don’t believe he wishes to sign letters,” wrote Julien Denormandie, referring to thank-you notes for people who donate more than 500 euros. Instead, “the chief” sometimes sent mobile phone text messages. The problem was that the separation of the role of the candidate (albeit an unofficial one, for he would announce his bid only in November) and that of the minister was sometimes blurred, as illustrated by the request from the founder of an investment fund who, after making a donation to Macron’s movement, asked for a meeting with the minister. His request was passed directly to Ferracci by Denormandie, who added in his correspondence: “Sophie, for your ‘request for an audience’ folder. Thanks very much.”
On September 15th, two weeks after Macron resigned from government, Emmanuel Miquel wrote that a verification of donors’ backgrounds should be made to ensure the “absence of an eventual conflict of interest (incompatibility with the previous duties of EM)” and the “recommendable character of the donor”. He transmitted a list of names and contact details concerning 62 people who had made donations to the movement, most of them domiciled in Paris and London. Their donations together totalled 276,000 euros. “I’ll look more closely tomorrow, but at first sight I see none who are likely to represent a problem,” replied Alexis Kohler, a former chief-of-staff to Macron at the economy ministry. Kohler was then working in the private sector, after having worked full-time on the campaign, but remained active in helping the candidate. After Macron’s election, Kohler was appointed secretary-general of the Elysée Palace (it was he who announced to the press the formation of the new government on May 17th).
On February 2nd 2017, Cédric O wrote to Dargnat about the background of foreign donors he had come across in the campaign accounts. “Are you happy with the [money] transfers received?” he asked. “Yes, I know all of them,” replied Dargnat immediately.
At one point, the deputy manager of the branch of the Crédit Agricole bank where the campaign held an account wrote to tell the movement that she was required to ask for formal justifications of the money transfers it received from abroad. Mediapart has found in the leaked documents several examples of potentially unlawful donations but which were all, according to the information available, put in order in a legal manner. The problems were notably due to foreign donors’ misunderstanding of French laws governing contributions to a political cause, such as the prohibition on corporate entities to make a donation, and the different limits placed on contributions to a party or a candidate.
An example of this was a donation made on March 21st this year, when the association representing the funding of Macron as a candidate, the AFCPEM (which is separate to that for the financing of his political movement), received a bank transfer of 12,000 euros from Amin Hiridjee, a wealthy businessman based in Madagascar whose company activities include the telecoms, energy and property sectors on the island. Dargnat sent an email to Amin Hiridjee’s brother Hassanein Hiridjee, also a businessman. It would appear from Dargnat’s use of the informal, more intimate French “tu” for “you”, that he apparently knew the brother well. “We are compelled to fully refund the donations which exceed the [legal] ceiling,” wrote Dargnat. “On the account of the AFCPEM (for the financing of the candidate) the authorized maximum is 4,600 euros; on that of the AFEMA (for the financing of the movement), the maximum is 7,500 euros.” Dargnat then asked Hassanein, “if it is not too awkward”, to organise two transfer payments “one for 4,600 to the benefit of the AFCPEM and the other for 7,500 to the benefit of the AFEMA.” The problem was quickly solved: “I’ll look after it and will get back to you,” replied Hassanein Hiridjee.
In January, the leaked documents show that five senior members of the En Marche! staff met to discuss “funding from some 20 Lebanese donors”, during which, according to a summary of the meeting, the “problem was “dealt with (identified)”. Mediapart contacted the En Marche! Movement, now renamed since Macron’s election as La République En Marche! (The republic on the move), for an explanation about the meeting but received no reply to the questions submitted.
As of the movement’s creation, it had attracted, as an internal document phrased it in April 2016, “strong demand for the organization of events” abroad. Members of the French expatriate community in London, New York, San Francisco and Geneva were particularly active in collecting donations. Occasionally foreign investors directly contacted the movement’s staff in France.
At the end of March 2017, when Macron was well established in opinion polls as the election frontrunner, the head of a large New York-based hedge fund contacted Cédric O, via a person known to both of them, to request a meeting with one of the movement’s senior staff in Paris. Cédric O notified Dargnat, who accepted to look after the request. “Yes, I handle two to three per day of presentations of this sort,” wrote Dargnat to O. “It relieves me of the negotiations over the loan,” he added, referring to the somewhat tardy negotiations by the movement to raise an extra 8 million euros. Nothing in the leaked documents which refer to the movement’s accounts, as studied by Mediapart, suggests that the hedge fund boss gave financing to Macron’s campaign. But the incident was an example of the international interest in his presidential bid.
'It's her job to get dosh from people with dough'
The En Marche! movement set, and met, a target of bringing in 1.15 million euros in donations by July 2016. As of September, just after Macron left the government, the donations increased considerably.
According to the movement’s financial accounts, a little more than 5 million euros were raised by December 31st, significantly more than its goal of 3.5 million euros. Almost 70% of that sum (3.482 million euros) was collected from 669 donors (of which 400 gave more than 5,000 euros) through the fundraising parties and private networking.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
In April 2017, when Macron came under increasing pressure from some of the French media to explain where his funds had come from, Ismaël Emelien advised that the movement should insist publicly on the contribution of small donors, and underline that the average donation was 50 euros. In one of the leaked documents he highlighted the “1/3 of donations” which were equal to or under 30 euros, the close to “2/3 of donations” that represented 65 euros or less and that “donations above 5,000 euros” concerned just “1.7% of all donors”. It was an example of the skill of communications-speak, because in reality the contributions from the major donors were crucial. In its financial projections for the period of January-May 2017, the En Marche! officials had planned that the fundraising campaign among wealthy supporters would represent 57.5% of the sum of all donations to the movement.
Beyond the fundraising operations in Paris, London, New York and Geneva, Dargnat had also looked to Africa. One of the leaked documents dated June 2016 contained a message he wrote to the head of a major French bank, whose name is withheld here, on the African continent. “As mentioned, through your good offices and those of [name also withheld] and others, it would be exceptional to be able to organise fundraising on the African continent, and notably in Ivory Coast,” Dargnat enthused.
Contacted by Mediapart, the banker, who confirmed that he had met both Dargnat and, subsequently, Macron, said he ultimately refused to engage himself in the project. “The question of raising funds was never, in reality, the subject of a discussion,” he told Mediapart. “I said clearly that our [professional] duties could not allow us to place ourselves to the fore, in a visible manner. I said that if a visit to Ivory Coast was organised, I could take part as a Franco-Ivorian citizen, but that’s all. I don’t like mixing up roles.”
Other bankers were not so cautious. The Rothschild bank, where Macron had worked as a merchant banker for four years, gave its unreserved support for him. Olivier Pécoux, the bank’s managing partner and co-chairman of its executive committee, who in reality is the operational head of the bank, organised a meeting with potential donors for En Marche! at a location on the Champs-Elysées in central Paris. Before that he had already himself contributed 7,500 euros to the movement. Seven months after the Champs-Elysée event he had still not been refunded for his expenses incurred in organizing the meeting. Contacted by Mediapart, he declined to be interviewed.
Five other managers of the bank, a privileged partner of the French state in capital operations managed by the finance ministry, also gave their financial support for Macron’s En Marche! movement. They are Laurent Baril (7,500 euros), Cyril Dubois de Mont-Marin (7, 500 euros), Cyrille Harfouche (7,500 euros), Alexandre de Rothschild (2,500 euros) and Arnaud Joubert (7,500 euros). Florence Danjoux – the civil partner of Vincent Danjoux, one of the bank’s associate managers – was also among the early donors (7,500 euros), as was Luce Gendry (3,000 euros), an associate-manager up until 2016.
On May 19th 2016, Philippe Guez, a Rothschild director, organised a meeting of about ten potential donors at his apartment in the upmarket 16th arrondissement of Paris. They included company directors, lawyers, family office managers and property investors, who met with Emmanuel Macron and Christian Dargnat. “All of them were informed about a contribution of 7,500 euros,” wrote Guez.
Within the Edmond de Rothschild private bank, several of the staff rallied behind Macron, including Mylène Bonot, manager for “partnerships” of the bank. “Hallo everyone,” wrote Cédric O in April 2016. “Following on our correspondence of yesterday evening, and as agreed, I am sending you Mylène’s profile. I think she will be a top person for giving help with the fundraising, for managing the running order of contacts; she is very smart, really nice. It is her job to get dosh from people who have dough and what’s more she’s a gal, which is a good advantage. What’s more, I know her very well and I have confidence in her.”
The young woman subsequently played an active role for Macron's movement in seeking out and following up major donors, in close liaison with Emmanuel Miquel. Neither Mylène Bonot, nor En Marche! responded to Mediapart’s request for information about her mission, notably whether she was paid for the task - or whether her work was more of a long-term investment.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse