This is the case which, all summer, has stoked the fire on social networks. An endless soap opera, which opposes colorful characters on Instagram and Twitter who are experienced in digital clashes: on the one hand, rapper Elie Yaffa, alias Booba, 5 million followers, accustomed to violent fights; on the other, Magali Berdah, 41, buzz expert and powerful boss of Shauna Events, an agency that manages the business of reality TV candidates. The object of the clash, which is now spreading in the traditional media: from Miami, where he lives, the “Duke of Boulogne”, who will be in concert on September 3 at the Stade de France, plays the vindicators and denounces this which he considers to be “scams” of influencers based in Dubai. Booba, who knows that the subject is in the media, filed a complaint against X for “misleading commercial practices” and “organized gang scam” last July. And although the Grasse prosecutor’s office, which was seized of the case at the end of August, has not yet opened an investigation, the rapper is suing Magali Berdah, popess of influence marketing, of her vindictiveness for almost four months. .
Over the summer, the case took a disturbing turn when the rapper’s white-hot fans also came after her. Between mid-May and the end of July, Magali Berdah received no less than 69,687 hateful messages – with supporting bailiff reports – most referring to hashtags associated with Booba: “piracy is never over” ( Piracy Music is the label created by Booba), “OKLM” (its media), a pirate flag, etc. By comparison, the young Mila, harassed after having posted extremely virulent messages against Islam in 2020, had received around 100,000.
“I receive between 300 and 500 messages a day, and I can’t cut my social networks, it’s my work tool”, explains the boss of Shauna Events. Faced with the surge of violent messages, an investigation into death threats, harassment and public insult of a racial nature was opened on June 1 by the National Pole for the Fight against Online Hate, created in 2021 within the Paris prosecutor’s office. Reports have been made on the Pharos online platform, which alerts people to hateful and dangerous content on the Internet. The investigations are entrusted to the OCLCH (Central Office for the Fight against Crimes against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes), which has a division dedicated to the fight against hate crimes (which had handled the Mila case) . Eight investigators track down the most virulent accounts. So far, no arrests have been made. In the meantime, the influencer, also a columnist for the C8 program Touche pas à mon poste, hosted by Cyril Hanouna, no longer lives. The director of the national police, Frédéric Veaux, however, does not consider it necessary for the time being to provide him with close protection. But the police are watching the area around his building. And the young woman has hired two bodyguards, including one who sleeps at home.
The rapper Booba, here, at the Eurockéennes de Belfort, in 2017, is in conflict with the influencer Magali Berdah.
(SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP)
On June 26, Magali Berdah had to leave her Parisian home after her address and telephone number, as well as the floor and the landing door of her apartment were broadcast on an Instagram account, “piracy or nothing”, followed by 120,000 people. There were also photos of the dog of the boss of Shauna Events, pictures of her living room, and the Instagram account of the security guard she employs, with her schedule. Accompanied by a message: “We are going to come and tie you up, you, your children, your fag husband and you will be tied up in your living room and you will see us rob everything. We have no soul. , if only ONE, headshot for all of you with a silencer.” The same author, an hour later: “In France, there’s no justice haha. If I rob you, I’ll go to prison and I’ll take 7 to 8 years, in reality, I do half […] . So getting your blood flowing is not a concern.” A week before, when Magali Berdah asked for the umpteenth time that this campaign of harassment cease, Booba had sneered and posted: “The more you agonize, the more it excites me!”
Since then, death threats have multiplied. Especially since Booba blows on the embers and stirs up the anti-Semitic hatred of some of his fans, who did not expect more to let go. On July 15, he published a tweet in which he accused her of being linked to the Israeli secret services: “The go she sent me the Mossad without sugar in Miami to turn me off, tracker under the gammos [Editor’s note: the 4X4], infrared camera, spinning etc. I unmasked one in the garbage cans I stripped it and it wants to be the victim…”. “By claiming, in a video and then a tweet on June 15, to have survived a punitive expedition attributed to the Mossad, and by associating Magali Berdah with these imaginary facts, Mr. Yaffa (Booba) intentionally stirred up the omnipresent anti-Semitic hatred in this file”, assures Me Antonin Gravelin-Rodriguez, one of the lawyers for the boss of Shauna Events. Evidenced by the voice messages received by Magali Berdah in the process. “Go live in Israel, you dirty whore. Don’t think that because you have the Jewish community with you, you’re untouchable. The day things go wrong in France, you’ll be the first to burn, you bunch of sluts. We put your heads on pikes and we’ll go to the public square. Everyone will be happy. The day it goes to hell in this country, you’ll be the first to burn,” raves a courageous anonymous.
Ditto on July 22 after the broadcast by Booba, on Twitter, of a caricature worthy of the anti-Semitic press of the 1930s, representing Marlène Schiappa, with a hooked nose, facing a Magali Berdah sitting on a bag of banknotes…” Too bad Hitler didn’t take care of your grandparents”, notably received, in the process, the influencer. The rapper has never spoken publicly to condemn these remarks, but his lawyer, Patrick Klugman, recalled in a press release that his client “is not responsible for these threats”. He told L’Express that “the more we point out the turpitudes of the company Shauna Events, the more Magali Berdah uses anti-Semitic insults to create a smokescreen and not to respond on the merits. I consider it a defense system” .
The members of the government, who had played so well with the visibility of the boss of Shauna Events during the previous five-year term, remain silent, and do not seem to take the measure of the problem. Marlène Schiappa, new Secretary of State in charge of the social and solidarity economy, tweeted on August 6 to defend the blogger Léna Situations, also victim of a summer raid, but did not have a word for the one she had received six months ago to publicize her action against violence against women. It is true that Léna Situations, first French influencer invited to the prestigious Met Gala, does not drag the sulphurous image of the stars of reality TV.