Frédéric Chatillon, David Rachline and Jean-Lin Lacapelle are on a boat. The bottles of rosé have been emptied; It’s hot. The first, in navy blue swim shorts, holds the helm. In the back, the mayor of Fréjus is resting, lying on a white bench, aviator glasses raised on his head. Between him and MEP Lacapelle, two young women, also in swimsuits. This June 21, 2022, life is good for friends, on a stroll in the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. “Good night little ones”, will publish on Instagram Frédéric Chatillon in a photo which shows the boat but not the protagonists.
Officially, the ex-boss of the GUD (Union Defense Group, a radical far-right group) has been sailing far from France since his expatriation to Rome, where he set up his communications company Riwal. He did not answer our call or our message, but his friends swear that he no longer touches politics. “He won millions with the National Front, now he just wants to be happy,” says one of them. Sentenced for fraud and abuse of corporate assets in the context of Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign in 2017 (the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the sentence in March, while releasing his partner and friend Axel Loustau), the Romain remained discreet in recent months, eager to be forgotten by the media and justice. Until the demonstration of May 6, organized in particular by a reformed GUD to commemorate the death of Sébastien Deyzieu, an activist of the French Work who died on the sidelines of a rally in 1994. Axel Loustau was seen there, among young masked men, in black, with menacing profiles. This earned the former RN regional councilor a regular release of Marine Le Pen, who no longer wants to suffer “guilt by capillarity”, according to his expression, induced by his youthful friendships with the Chatillon-Loustau duo.
On Sud Radio, she simply mentions “an accountant” about Axel Loustau, who was the treasurer of Jeanne, the microparty of the leader of the French far right. Two days later, Frédéric Chatillon flew to the aid of his old comrade by breaking his silence on the far-right identity site Breizh Info. “I want to pay tribute and congratulate those who maintain the torch,” he said of his “old friends” who participated in the protest. What provoke the anger of Marine Le Pen, obliged, in The world, to dissociate himself for the first time from his friend “Fred”, met in the 1990s on the benches of the law school of Assas. “If Frédéric Chatillon wishes to participate in an event of this nature, I will draw the consequences personally,” she said.
How to distance oneself from a man, long at the heart of the system, who remains in the eyes of many a friend and a referent? Commercially, Frédéric Chatillon has in no way cut ties with the National Rally. The company e-politic, of which he owns 30% of the shares (and to which he rents his offices), still manages the communication of the movement and of many RN parliamentarians. Axel Loustau, he owns 15% of the assets of this company which took over from Riwal when justice prohibited the company from working for the party.
E-politics: 770,000 euros in 2022, 400,000 euros in 2019
For the 2022 presidential campaign, the structure invoiced 770,000 euros for services, thus placing itself as one of the leading providers of far-right training. During the Europeans, the company also managed the communication of the head of the list Jordan Bardella for an amount of approximately 400,000 euros. Officially, another man runs the business. Paul-Alexandre Martin, nicknamed “PAM”, a former number two of the National Youth Front (FNJ). A man of confidence, member of the first circle of Frédéric Chatillon. In mid-December, the two men met in Berlin for a friendly trip, and a naked dip in a lake despite the winter cold.
Frédéric Chatillon keeps many connections within the RN, particularly with David Rachline and Jean-Lin Lacapelle, therefore. “He’s a friend. I’m loyal. I don’t necessarily embrace all of his ideas,” confided the first, in January, during an interview with L’Express. “We got married at the same time, we divorced at the same time, he’s a friend,” Jean-Lin Lacapelle confided to us in April. The two men were invited to the wedding in Chatillon, in July 2021, in the heart of the Italian capital, in the sumptuous Villa Piccolomini and its lush gardens, from where we can see the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica. “They are like my nieces”, said Jean-Lin Lacapelle, the quasi-brother, about the (eight) daughters of Frédéric Chatillon. If David Rachline stays away from the objectives, that day, Jean-Lin Lacapelle proudly poses with the groom, Axel Loustau and Nicolas Crochet, former accountant of Marine Le Pen in 2017. All members of the “Gud Connection”, this informal network of ex-radical militants now converted into business. Alongside them a fourth friend completes the band: the Franco-Iranian businessman Farshad Forouzandeh, whom everyone calls “Faroud”. The entrepreneur shares with his friends a capacity to get into trouble: he is indicted for misuse of company assets, concealment of illegal taking of interest, concealment of embezzlement of public funds, concealment of favouritism, fraud employment and money laundering in a camping case in Cogolin (Var), just like his wife, also present at the wedding, and she also indicted for several counts in the context of a beach concession that they managed hand in hand. The relationship with the mayor, the ex-FN Marc-Etienne Lansade (now gone to the Reconquête! party of Eric Zemmour), also indicted, is at the heart of the investigation. “He’s a friend, we don’t do politics together when we see each other once or twice a year,” says Farshad Fourouzandeh, who compares L’Express’ call to “the Iranian inquisition”. “If you talk about me, expect you to respond to justice,” threatens the businessman on the phone.
Weekend (neofascist) in Rome
On each other’s (often private) social networks, friends appear side by side. Here, on the beach of Tortu ‘in Saint-Raphaël, where Frédéric Chatillon and David Rachline pose at the table at the bar, in June 2022. The mayor of Fréjus also visits his friend once or twice a year in the capital Italian, a city he appreciates as much for its gastronomy as for its encounters. The last time was in February 2023, accompanied, again, by his friend “Faroud” and his wife.
Rome has long been an obligatory pilgrimage for the entire French far right, who drinks spritzes at the Carré Monti bar, strikes a pose in front of the Palazzo della civiltà del lavoro (one of the most emblematic buildings of Mussolini’s realist architecture ), or have a bite to eat at Cutty Sark, the favorite restaurant of activists from Casa Pound, the neo-fascist party based in Rome. For far-right young people in need of encounters, the “faf connection” offers a solid network. They can meet the polemicist Julien Rochedy, former boss of the FNJ who is among the close guard of Frédéric Chatillon. At the end of April, the two men shared a week’s vacation in Sicily with their companions, and meet regularly in Rome or on the coast, in one of the chic private beaches south of the city such as the Marine Village.
Dolphins, paganism and radical obsessions
If his friends swear that he is not trying to maintain his legend, Frédéric Chatillon’s social networks tell another story. On Twitter, the man readily distills political messages, especially when it comes to supporting Jordan Bardella during his campaign for the presidency of the movement, or Marine Le Pen, when she is threatened by Eric Zemmour in 2021. rediscovers his obsessions: defense of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, indulgence towards Russia (a position he shares with his friend Régis Le Sommier, editor-in-chief of the pro-Russian media omerta), critic of American and Israeli “imperialism”, among those who are regularly suspected of anti-Semitism. On Instagram, Frédéric Chatillon multiplies the references to insiders: lunch in a restaurant “Il Delfino” (“Coincidence? I don’t think so!”, He wrote on April 26 on the network. The dolphin designating, in the most radical fringes , “uncle Dolphi”, that is to say Adolf Hitler), pagan ceremonies in Sweden or France, and business trips to Brazil, Bali, Paraguay, Venezuela…
The opportunity for the younger generation to maintain the link with this tutelary figure. Among them, the thirties Logan Djian (former leader, also, of the GUD) and Kléber Buckner (militant of the small group in the 2010s) rarely fail to “like” the publications of the boss. They claimed, however, to have cut ties with the movement during their trial in June 2022 (they were sentenced to five years in prison, including two firm, alongside Romain Bouvier and Loïk Le Priol, the alleged assassins of the Argentinian international Federico Martin Aramburu, for having tortured in 2015 one of their former leader, Etienne Klein). A digital fidelity that they share with Marine Le Pen’s photographer, and several parliamentary assistants from the National Rally, 2.0 admirers of the Roman retiree. His networks go as far as the National Rally group at the National Assembly: in private, Frédéric Chatillon has multiplied the SMS of congratulations to the new deputies of the National Rally, elected in the wave of June 2022.
With new party chairman Jordan Bardella, the relationship takes a more intimate turn. For several years, the one who was not yet president of the National Rally had his habits on the Roman terrace of the entrepreneur. The young man was in a relationship with Kerridwen Chatillon, one of the eight daughters of the former head of GUD. Since then, the ties have never been completely severed between the two men. Contrary to what his recent comments on France Inter suggest, Jordan Bardella is not unaware that Frédéric Chatillon, in love with Brittany and whose wife owns a white and blue farmhouse in a village in Eure-et-Loir, makes regular stops in Paris, where he never forgets to greet his old friends. The troop sometimes meets at the Cardinal, the large and old-fashioned brasserie on the roundabout of Saint-Cloud, where Chatillon and Loustau have lunch on occasion.
Lunches by Jean-Marie Le Pen
Once a year at least, the first takes Jean-Marie Le Pen to lunch at the restaurant, and occasionally introduces him to certain relatives. For the founder of the National Front, Frédéric Chatillon is above all “a friend of the family”. The last time was on December 16, in an Iranian establishment in the 15th arrondissement, Mazeh, which serves grilled meats and delicious Taftun rolls. Farshad Forouzandeh was also there.
Marine Le Pen has never cut ties with the interested party either, although today she leaves the threat of a friendly and professional break up, without anyone knowing if it is a serious warning or media defence. “Fred and Axel had undertaken that their commitment would not pose a problem, there are duties when you are service providers”, blows a mutual friend with Marine Le Pen, who speaks of “bullshit”. It remains to be seen whether the prank will put an end to a friendship of thirty years.