How close are Macron and McKinsey?

The allegations that Emmanuel Macron is too close to McKinsey advisers are as old as his political ambitions. So far he has always brushed them off the table. But now they are dealing with the judiciary.

Emmanuel Macron, here at his only event in Paris, ran a minimalist campaign. Who advised him to do this – and did he pay enough for it? The judiciary is now investigating this question.

Sarah Meyssonnier / Reuters

His campaign was exceptionally short, but in retrospect it was quite efficient. At the end of April, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as French President. But now there are doubts as to whether everything went right in his fight for the voters’ favour.

The public prosecutor responsible for financial crimes has apparently been investigating the relationship between the President’s entourage and the American consulting firm McKinsey since October 20. The authority confirmed a report by the newspaper on Thursday «Le Parisien», according to which three investigations are currently underway in the McKinsey case.

Old acquaintance

On the one hand, the judiciary is investigating the suspicion that McKinsey’s consulting services for Macron’s election campaigns – i.e. those of 2017 and 2022 – were not billed at all or were not billed correctly. On the other hand, an investigation into favoritism was launched. Apparently there are indications that McKinsey’s consultants have been given preferential treatment when awarding public contracts. The third investigation, which has been ongoing since the end of March, concerns McKinsey’s tax status in France. Thanks to an ingenious construct, the American company’s French subsidiary hasn’t paid any taxes for ten years. The third suspicion is therefore tax fraud and the intention to cover it up. In connection with this, McKinsey’s offices in France were raided in May.

The accusations against Emmanuel Macron that he maintains too close relationships with McKinsey advisers are as old as his presidential ambitions. According to the newspaper, the first contacts were made “Le Monde” In 2007, when Macron, then a financial inspector, was appointed to a commission tasked with proposing economic reforms to then-President Sarkozy.

When shortly before his first election in May 2017, the e-mail accounts of members of his movement “En Marche!” were hacked and made public, contacts between McKinsey and several of Macron’s entourage also came to light. It is also known that some McKinsey advisors switched to posts in the ministries after Macron’s election victory.

At the origin of the recent storm of indignation is a Senate report from the spring that «tentacle-like phenomenon» wants to have discovered. In it, the senators criticize the government’s growing reliance on the services of private consulting firms. The report states that they would have advised the government on all major reforms and also on how to deal with the pandemic. This approach is not new; but apparently the government under Emmanuel Macron has increasingly relied on external expertise: According to the report, spending more than doubled between 2018 and 2021 to around 893 million euros. McKinsey is said to have been given a lot of attention, especially during the pandemic. The report also reveals that Americans don’t pay taxes in France.

Now, government contracts with external consulting firms are not unusual, nor are McKinsey consultants moving to a ministry doing anything illegal. But in the spring, in the final phase of the election campaign, individual members of the government and the president felt compelled to comment on the allegations. Macron did this, visibly annoyed, in a television program at the end of March. There are public tenders in France and these rules are respected. If there is evidence of tampering, the criminal justice system should look into it, he said.

Apparently that has now happened. But it remains to be seen what conclusion the investigating judges will reach. In its short statement on Thursday, the Élysée Palace pointed out, among other things, that the investigations were the result of complaints by individual MPs and associations. The government’s alleged closeness to American consulting firms has outraged the left-wing opposition in particular. It was the Communist-Socialist-Green group that commissioned the Senate report on “the growing influence” of private consultancies on public policy in the first place.

Macron himself said on Friday that he didn’t think he was the focus of the investigation. The judiciary should do its job and it is a good thing that there is an investigation. Macron would not be the first president to cheat in funding his election campaign. For this reason, Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to one year in prison last year in the so-called Bygmalion affair. Macron, whose personal relationships are ultimately at stake, could not be questioned by the judiciary until 2027 at the earliest. During his term of office, the President is protected by immunity from prosecution.


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