PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron mentioned Friday he believes he’s not “on the coronary heart of the investigation” into the function performed by consultancy corporations in his 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns.
Macron hinted at “political assaults,” in his first public response to revelations Thursday that French prosecutors had been wanting into allegations of irregular marketing campaign accounting and suspicions of underbilling of labor carried out by consultancy corporations in the course of the campaigns.
“There have been quite a lot of political assaults on a subject. It’s on this subject {that a} preliminary inquiry has been opened,” he mentioned in a veiled reference to the prolonged controversy over his ties to the U.S. consultancy agency McKinsey.
Talking in Dijon, Macron instructed reporters he wasn’t anxious and that his 2017 marketing campaign accounts had been scrutinized and accepted.
Along with the inquiry opened final month into the funding of Macron’s presidential marketing campaign, investigators belonging to France’s Nationwide Monetary Prosecutor’s workplace are additionally wanting into allegations of “favoritism.” In line with newspaper Le Parisien, there are suspicions of wrongdoing regarding the “circumstances” through which public contracts had been attributed by the French authorities to McKinsey.
Requested whether or not he had given profitable public contracts to consultants who had labored professional bono on his presidential marketing campaign, Macron mentioned, “I let you know no … I’ve already mentioned so earlier than.”
“I can let you know what a president of the Republic does and what he doesn’t do. He is not going to go and meddle within the granting of this or that public contract,” he mentioned.
Macron has repeatedly come below fireplace over his ties to McKinsey, relationship again to his first election marketing campaign. POLITICO first reported final yr that the federal government employed the main consultancy to assist with its coronavirus vaccine rollout, elevating questions in regards to the Macron administration’s total use of consultancies.
A four-month investigation led by senators and printed in March discovered that the federal government and French public administrations had signed contracts value at the least €2.4 billion with consultancy corporations since 2018. The report acknowledged that consulting bills at authorities ministries had greater than doubled since Macron got here to energy in 2017, with a pointy acceleration in 2021.
Controversies over contracts granted to consulting corporations dogged Macron’s bid for reelection this yr, and led the federal government to announce new guidelines to rein in the usage of exterior corporations for policymaking.
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