The “Marianne fund” has not finished embarrassing Marlène Schiappa. The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo and the leader of the deputies LFI Mathilde Panot announced to take legal action after revelations on the use of the subsidies allocated within the framework of the fund against separatism and radicalization, created in 2021 by the then minister. Citizenship Officer.
The first revelations of Marianne and France 2 related to an association recipient of the fund launched after the assassination of Samuel Paty. The Union of Societies for Physical Education and Preparation for Military Service (USEPPM) allegedly paid undue sums to its leaders. The second part of the survey, conducted by Mediapart, reveals the funding of another association, “Reconstruct the common”, to the tune of 330,000 euros. According to the online media, the structure “had just been created” and presented no activity report when it applied for the call for projects. In addition, “in addition to the Marianne fund, the association also received a generous public subsidy of nearly 30,000 euros to… support its launch.”
On October 26, 2021, the association launched a YouTube channel, “Comme Un”. It presents itself as “a daily meeting (or almost), mixing good humor, jolt of neurons and emotions, which will remind us that, behind our divisions, what we have in common is solid. From January to August 2022, Mediapart lists “57 videos (…) produced, currently totaling just under 47,000 views.” The problem ? If the association was committed to fulfilling a mission to fight against online radicalization among 18-15 year olds, the content it publishes goes far beyond this theme, and seems to venture into the political or even partisan field, especially during The electoral campaign. The videos deal with a certain freedom of tone, in “talks” lasting several hours, on various subjects such as “McKinsey / Youth in the face of extremes/dating sites and apps” (title of episode 8, broadcast on 2 June 2022, i.e. after the presidential election). The debates are led by a former departmental referent of “Young People with Macron”, Aswan Boughera, and repeatedly attack Nupes figures, extending to the “rise of extremes”, “wokism”, or again “Islamo-leftism”. Protests quickly arose on the left.
In a video dated June 15, 2022, ex-candidate Anne Hidalgo is criticized at length for her management of the city of Paris. “Anne Hidalgo creates something common”, ironically a participant, who maintains that the Mayor arouses unanimity against her, and thereby contributes to a certain cohesion of Parisians. “Pseudo-ecological” measures, dirt, pestilential odors… The debaters are having a field day.
The city councilor quickly reacted on Twitter, saying he was “scandalized by the revelations published in Mediapart on the use of the Marianne fund.” “If the facts are proven, she adds, I will use all legal means to ensure justice is done.”
This Friday, at the beginning of the afternoon, in a letter addressed to the Prime Minister posted on her Twitter account, she declared: “I have decided to seize the Public Prosecutor of Paris so that judicial investigations are carried out” , inviting to “extend the investigations carried out to the multiple videos” attached in copy of his mail. “The facts related, if proven, are extremely serious” because “likely to characterize the criminal offense of embezzlement of public funds but also other offenses”. “Several videos, which deliberately discredit elected officials of the Republic, would be financed by the Marianne fund. I am one of these elected officials, ”writes the elected socialist. The referral to the prosecution was in progress on Friday, said the entourage of the mayor to AFP. Mathilde Panot (LFI), leader of the LFI deputies, also seized the prosecution.
The PS group in the Senate wants the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry on the subject. “We are in the fight against radicalization and we end up with political hacks”, summarizes on Public Senate the senator from Val-d’Oise Rachid Temal, who does not hesitate to speak of “State scandal”. His colleague, Rémi Féraud, explains to Le Figaro that the request is ready and must now be discussed with the other groups and the senatorial majority. “But I don’t see the Senate, which has nevertheless shown its dynamism in controlling the action of the government, refusing a commission of inquiry. We are talking about embezzlement of public funds for the purpose of smearing competitors of Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election.
The elected PS specifies that these embezzlements “are part in particular of the campaign ‘Saccage Paris’, which would therefore have been financed from public funds on the grounds of secularism.” And to underline “that we have a Macronist majority there who passed a law on fake news and are in fact very fond of it, who denounce electoral manipulation, coming from Russia but engage in it in a comparable way. The senator concludes that it will be up to justice to determine what political overlaps should be made. As for him, he “reserves the possibility in the days which have just come to appeal to article 40 to seize justice. They won’t get away with it.”
Anne Hidalgo is not the only one to have been targeted by these political videos. The elected environmentalist Sandrine Rousseau was also the subject of debates sometimes far removed from the question of separatism in the midst of the legislative campaign, in a video entitled: Is Sandrine Rousseau a representative of the woke culture? Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the political alliance of Nupes are also taken to task. “I find it abnormal that a Mélenchon can quote as he wants Trotsky who is all the same the greatest inspiration of the Nazi camps”, we hear in particular say
Mediapart also notes that the association, “totally financially dependent on money from the ministry”, “has been stopped since the summer”, even though the sustainability of the action was one of the conditions for benefiting from these subsidies.
