Journalists, elected officials, advisors, diplomats… They all assiduously frequented the Elysée. Their other point in common? They were Kremlin spies. The KGB and its successors recruited these “moles” by banking on ideology, ego, sometimes compromise, often money. They had to report everything they saw. On special occasions, they were sent to poison the “Château”. Revelations on Russian penetration within French power, up to the Presidency of the Republic, from General de Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron.
EPISODE 1 – Russian spies at the heart of the Elysée, our revelations: how the DGSI protects presidents
EPISODE 2 – “André”, the KGB spy at the newspaper “Le Monde”: the last secrets of an elusive agent
EPISODE 3 – A KGB spy alongside General de Gaulle? Investigation into the Pierre Maillard affair
EPISODE 4 – A KGB agent in the Assembly: our revelations about Jacques Bouchacourt, alias “Nym”
EPISODE 5 – Pierre Sudreau, the minister very close to the KGB: these unpublished documents which say a lot
EPISODE 6 – AFP journalist and KGB mole without knowing it: the incredible Jean-Marie Pelou affair
EPISODE 7 – A “relay spy” between Mitterrandie and the USSR? The thousand lives of “Colonel” Harris Puisais
EPISODE 8 – Alexandre Orlov, the diplomat who became Vladimir Putin’s agent of influence in France
The affair seems to go back to time immemorial. Emmanuel Macron was indeed President of the Republic, but there had been neither Covid, nor yellow vests, nor especially the video of one of his collaborators assaulting a demonstrator on May 1, 2018 at Place de la Contrescarpe, in Paris. “We are experiencing momentum, a moment of change,” rejoiced the founder of En Marche! on Twitter, a few days after triumphant legislative elections. No one knows his name then, but a bearded young man accompanies him everywhere. At 26, Alexandre Benalla does not have his identity published in Official Journal, as is customary, but he occupies the position of deputy chief of staff at the Elysée. Even more atypical, he participated in several meetings on the reorganization of the security of the President of the Republic, with the highest ranks, the prefect Patrick Strzoda, chief of staff at the Elysée, General Eric Bio Farina, military commander of the palace presidential and General Lionel Lavergne, head of the Security Group of the Presidency of the Republic (GSPR). With the last two, the deputy chief of staff even signs a report on the subject.
Seven years later, a preliminary investigation is still underway at the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF). It targets Alexandre Benalla for crimes of corruption, influence peddling, aggravated tax fraud laundering and misuse of corporate assets, for which he was taken into custody in December 2021. Because in the meantime, the justice discovered the two contracts in which he was involved with two Russian oligarchs, Iskander Makhmudov and Farkhad Akhmedov.
The first contract was signed even though the deputy chief of staff was still officiating at the Elysée and was authorized for defense secrecy. As for the second, it is tied up in this troubled period when Alexandre Benalla is no longer a collaborator of the President of the Republic but still has a diplomatic passport and a service passport. He still communicates with certain friends who have remained with Emmanuel Macron and claims to be close to them. According to a summary report from the Economic Crime Repression Brigade (BRDE), a total of 941,000 euros were paid to Alexandre Benalla, his associates and service providers for the two contracts.
Commercial links with the elite of the Russian oligarchy
The successive PNF magistrates in charge of the case do not have defense secret clearance; the investigation never went directly into the world of espionage. These suspicions remain unresolved. They bring back old memories: in the 1950s and 1960s, KGB officers took advantage of their business relationship with François Saar-Demichel, French businessman and baron of Gaullism, to recruit him as a Soviet agent, under the code name of “NN”.
On the other hand, the investigations have shed light on the chiaroscuro of the microcosm of intermediaries, of discreet relations between France and Russia, far from the embassies. With this observation: Alexandre Benalla had established commercial links with the elite of the Russian oligarchy. In its investigation report of February 20, 2019, the Senate Law Committee thunders: “There is no doubt that the relations maintained with a Russian oligarch by a collaborator of the Elysée directly involved in the security of the presidency of the Republic and a reservist from the military command of the Elysée Palace exercising a supervisory responsibility would be likely, due to the financial dependence they imply, to affect the security of the head of the State and, beyond that, the interests of our country.” What would have happened if Alexandre Benalla had stayed four, five, six years at the Elysée?
The first act of the affair would have taken place in Morocco. According to the entourage of Jean-Louis Haguenauer, a businessman who made his fortune in Russia, the latter “met” Alexandre Benalla “in a café in Marrakech, with friends”. We are “in the period between Macron’s election and his inauguration”. The bodyguard is not yet a presidential advisor, but he is preparing to become one. In his book, What they don’t want me to say (Plon), Alexandre Benalla proposed a different chronology. He explained that he “often went” to visit the Haguenauer art foundation in Marrakech, opened in 2009, and then “got to know” this collector. “Since then, we have seen each other from time to time. Jean-Louis knows my activity, my background and the exchanges with him are always friendly,” relates Benalla.
The shadow of Iskander Makhmudov
Jean-Louis Haguenauer could serve as a model for a character in a novel. Gravel voice, piercing green eyes, this native of Vaucluse settled in Moscow during the USSR and became rich under Elstine. The man, now 74 years old, speaks Russian perfectly, his children have Russian nationality. A businessman specializing in import-export, he has established numerous relationships within the Putinian political-security sphere, to the point of being friends, his entourage confirmed to us, with Vladimir Pronichev, number 2 of the FSB, Russian domestic intelligence, from 2003 to 2013, as revealed by Mediapart in 2019. Among many hats, Haguenauer once lent money to the French Jean-Michel Cosnuau, who runs KM19, a Moscow club located opposite the FSB headquarters, where secret agents come to have fun. In 2015, the Moscow police closed the nightclub, Cosnuau was accused of pimping.
At the same time, Jean-Louis Haguenauer plays the “door opener” for French companies wishing to establish themselves in Russia. He thus linked up with Martin Bouygues and Olivier Dassault. In 1991, he also received $375,000 from Olympique de Marseille, in order to bribe players from Spartak Moscow, OM’s opponents in the Champions League, said Jean-Pierre Bernès, then right-hand man of Bernard Tapie, before the investigating judge. In 1998, the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal sentenced Haguenauer to ten months in prison and a fine of 100,000 francs.
After the meeting in Marrakech and shortly before the summer of 2017, Jean-Louis Haguenauer, then “passing through Paris”, as he told investigators, met Alexandre Benalla again, this time “at the Peninsula”, a 16th century palace. district of Paris. The meeting would have been “brief”, the presidential advisor leaves his business card. According to the intermediary, it was in the summer of 2017 that the head of security for Iskander Makhmudov, a world-leading copper oligarch with numerous properties in France, approached him. He asks him to advise him on service providers for the protection of the businessman, whose fortune is estimated at around 6 billion euros.
A contract signed with a former Russian senator
It was in September 2017 that Haguenauer contacted Emmanuel Macron’s young collaborator. Then, in the last quarter of 2017, a meeting took place at the Collectionneur, another five-star hotel, with Vincent Crase, in charge of security at La République en marche and reservist at the Republican Guard of the Elysée, as well as a collaborator of the latter. A new meeting takes place in March 2018. The contract with Iskander Makhmudov was signed on June 6, 2018 for an amount of 980,000 euros with the company Mars of Vincent Crase, of which Alexandre Benalla is considered “the facilitator in fact” by the investigators. This company does not have the necessary approval to carry out a security mission, it subcontracts the services to a reputable group in the sector, Velours, but retains 122,000 euros of a first installment of payment. “I can assure you that I have never contributed to any negotiation, conclusion, and that I have never been interested in the slightest contract that Mr. Crase may have made with anyone, and even less with this person “, namely Iskander Makhmudov, asserted Alexandre Benalla before the Senate in January 2019.
A little over a month later, the Elysée advisor became famous. The World reveals that he attacked a protester on May 1, 2018. After a few days, he was fired. But he continues to communicate with at least one advisor to the Elysée, Ludovic Chaker, Mediapart wrote. The contractual relationship with Makhmudov nevertheless continues. A new agreement for the same amount is signed between the oligarch and France Close Protection, another company created specifically for this purpose. Alexandre Benalla’s brother appears in the statutes. A tranche of 294,000 euros is paid.
On December 2, 2018, another contract for an amount of 5.6 million euros was signed with Farkhad Akhmedov, former senator of United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s party, between 2004 and 2010. The fortune of this gas oligarch is estimated at $1.5 billion. This involves obtaining the lifting of the immobilization of a yacht in the United Arab Emirates. There follows a payment of 353,000 euros into an account opened by Alexandre Benalla in the online bank Revolut. “A contract which presents all the characteristics of an apocryphal piece”, that is to say a forgery, will scath the investigators in their summary report. Clearly, the police suspect that the contract arose after the payment of the money. At the end of December 2018, new revelations about Benalla’s diplomatic passport, which he never returned, mark the end of his good relations with the Elysée.
Benalla creates a business intelligence company
Since the beginning of the investigation, Alexandra Benalla has evoked unfounded suspicions and services well and truly carried out. “Strangely, this is not an article of the Penal Code,” he said in front of his friends. He has since founded the economic intelligence company Comya, based in Switzerland, where he has seven employees and around fifty collaborators, particularly in Africa.
Iskander Makhmudov and Farkhad Akhmedov repeat that they are not particularly close to the Kremlin. The second obtained to be removed from the list of people sanctioned by the Council of the European Union for their aid to the Putin regime, on May 29, 2024.
In 2016, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish Foreign Minister, still praised Akhmedov’s role in the bilateral Turkey-Russia relationship, calling him a “close friend” of Vladimir Putin”, in “close contact” with the Russian presidency In 2018, the two oligarchs were placed on a US Treasury list as influential figures in Russia, likely to be sanctioned in retaliation for the Kremlin’s interference in. the American election According to our information, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office is still far from having completed its investigations, with numerous requests for international cooperation having not yet received a response.
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