“I was not directly affected by Russian interference” and my “professional career”, in the private sector, “only concerns me”, affirmed the former Prime Minister François Fillon, questioned Tuesday in the Assembly on his past presence on the boards of Russian companies.
François Fillon was heard by a commission of inquiry launched by the National Rally (RN) and devoted to “political, economic and financial interference by foreign powers”.
In the introduction, the former right-wing presidential candidate first spoke of his “thirty-six years of public life”, as deputy, minister or head of government from 2007 to 2012. “Foreign interference, yes, I met some, most of the time they came from a friendly and allied country called the United States. I was listened to with President Sarkozy for five years by the NSA,” the US national security agency, he claimed.
François Fillon also mentioned “Chinese espionage” or possible “interference from countries like Turkey, Morocco, Algeria which directly give voting instructions at the time of French elections through religious leaders”. , he said again.
Questioned by the commission, he then mentioned his conversion to the private sector and his presence for a time on the board of directors of the Russian companies Sibur (petrochemicals) and Zarubezhneft (hydrocarbons), before he resigned after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army. It was on this invasion that the former right-wing presidential candidate of 2017 admitted to having made his only geopolitical mistake: “I gladly admit it. I was convinced that President Putin would not take action” in Ukraine. It is “an absolute disaster”.
But he persists and he signs: “I have never touched a penny of money from Russia in all my political and private life”, even if “I would naturally have been paid” if “I had continued” to sit on these two boards.
“In 2017, in the circumstances that everyone knows, I left public life and definitively started a professional career, which concerns only me, I am not accountable to anyone, in the natural respect for the laws of the Republic,” he said of his consultancy work.
“There is absolutely no friction between Zarubezhneft and France, [it’s] a company that does not operate in France”, but “mainly in Asia”, he underlined.
“I attended a council of the company Zarubezhneft” and a “council by videoconference because of Covid of the company Sibur” before “my resignation from these two boards”, “as soon as the invasion of the Ukraine,” said Francois Fillon.
He was then questioned about the French company Cifal operating in Russia and targeted by a preliminary investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office for suspicion of bribery of a foreign public official. According to a source familiar with the matter, Cifal was commissioned by the Congolese company Orion, led by Lucien Ebata, special adviser to the President of Congo-Brazzaville Denis Sassou Nguesso, to find an investor in Russia to sell its shares in the MBK oil field to. congo.
With this in mind, the leader of Cifal, Gilles Rémy, called on François Fillon to put him in touch with a Russian businessman. In this contract, he was remunerated as a business contributor. No suspicion of corruption currently weighs on him, said this source familiar with the matter. “I am not concerned by the ongoing investigations, I worked for a company which is concerned by an investigation”, underlined the one who has “very great respect for Cifal and its leader”.
