New twist in the McKinsey case. The controversy had encouraged the end of Emmanuel Macron’s electoral campaign for the 2022 presidential elections. According to our information, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) is investigating heads of “non-compliant maintenance of campaign accounts and undermining of accounting elements in a campaign”. account” of Emmanuel Macron, confirming the information of our colleagues from the Parisian.
The prosecution added this Thursday that, after “several complaints from elected officials and associations”, other information was opened “on October 21, 2022 from the heads of favoritism and concealment of favoritism.” The judges are therefore studying possible links between Emmanuel Macron and the McKinsey consultancy, which his government has requested on several occasions.
A first commission of inquiry in March
Published on March 16, a report by the Senate Investigation Commission had ensured that contracts between the State and the cabinets had “more than doubled” between 2018 and 2021, for a record amount of more than 1,000 million euros in 2021.
According to Mediapart, some cabinet members may have worked for free during Emmanuel Macron’s victorious 2017 presidential campaign.
The Senate report also pointed to a possible tax arrangement for McKinsey’s French entities, which would have allowed them not to pay corporate tax between 2011 and 2020. “It shocks me like everyone else,” Emmanuel Macron commented on M6, recalling all the same that the firm respected French law and that the government would continue to summon companies of the same type.
A potential reference to “criminal”
Interviewed in March 2022 in France 3 On these possible tax arrangements and financial benefits, the president in the campaign had been adamant.
“You have to be very clear: it is wrong! If there are signs of manipulation, go to criminal proceedings, ”he claimed.
It should be noted that the magistrates could only question Emmanuel Macron at the end of his term, since he is currently protected by article 67 of the Constitution, which grants the president criminal impunity. In this case, he could only speak of acts that were not committed in the exercise of his functions as president.
A few days later, on April 7, Emmanuel Macron was questioned by a reader of the Parisian outraged by the sums paid by the State to consulting firms. This time he had denounced a “big lie”.
“McKinsey is a ‘pouillème’ of this famous trillion (amount paid to cabinets editor’s note)! And 75% of that figure refers to computer services for Covid and for cybersecurity, ”he defended himself.
“The McKinsey debate is a big lie and a big manipulation. It’s not friends we hire,” he continued.
The end’opening of a preliminary investigation for the crime of aggravated tax evasion pointing to the consulting firm McKinsey, the head of state had reacted in April on TF1. “It is very good that the judge, the tax auditors open a case when it is said that a company has defrauded […] Justice does not deal with the use of consulting firms but with tax evasion”, he had justified.
Source: BFM TV
