The world published on Saturday an article entitled “Laurent Wauquiez’s very ‘confidential’ trip to Japan”, on a trip from March 8 to 15, including a dinner in a starred restaurant with French and Japanese business leaders. It was a trip “with an economic vocation in which more than 25 regional companies participated”, intended to “promote industrial companies in the region”, explained to AFP Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Entreprises, in charge of help companies develop internationally.
Laurent Wauquiez “hardly cares about transparency” says Environmentalists
The region’s economic development agency, of which Laurent Wauquiez is co-president, not the region, was the organizer of this mission, she specifies. “It is false to say that this trip had any confidential nature”, further reacts the agency, which ensures that it has “communicated on multiple occasions on social networks, with businesses and with the general public”.
The group of Ecologists at the regional council, which believes in a press release that Laurent Wauquiez “does not care much about transparency”, “requests that all elements relating to this trip be made public”. Same request from the Socialist, Ecologist and Democrat group. In addition, the former hope “that the Court of Auditors will finally carry out an audit of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Entreprises Agency, as it proposed in its report on the accounts of the Region in 2019”.
A dinner in a starred restaurant questions
During this trip, the delegation met Japanese leaders and officials, particularly in Hokkaido to promote businesses linked to mountain activities, and participated in the Smart Manufacturing Summit in Nagoya, in central Japan, explains the agency.
The regional opposition is particularly questioning the organization of a dinner with nearly 150 French and Japanese business leaders in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Tokyo. She reiterates her criticism of Laurent Wauquiez’s expenses, already pointed out by Mediapart for a very expensive dinner organized in the summer of 2022. This “summit dinner” is the subject of an investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF). “This new affair also reinforces our questions about the activities of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Entreprises over which the control of elected officials is very limited,” affirm the socialist elected officials, who emphasize that the agency is “80% financed” by the region.
For its part, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Entreprises indicates that “the amounts are not consolidated at this stage”, but that the financial statement “could be distributed as part of the process of presenting the agency’s own accounts”.