Marianne Fund: the Senate opens a commission of inquiry

Marlène Schiappa’s explanations will not have been enough to dispel the doubts. The Senate voted on Wednesday by a show of hands to grant the prerogatives of a commission of inquiry to the Finance Commission, for a period of three months, in order to carry out a fact-finding mission on the Marianne Fund launched in 2021 by the Secretary of State.

The Marianne Fund, a project to promote the “values ​​of the Republic” launched after the ination of Professor Samuel Paty in April 2021 by Marlène Schiappa – then Minister Delegate for Citizenship – has been at the heart of a controversy since revelations from the weekly Marianne and of France 2 end of March. According to their investigation, the main beneficiary of the fund, the USEPPM ociation, received an endowment of 355,000 euros which would have only fed a website and publications with little follow on social networks. Some 120,000 euros were also used to pay two of its former leaders. The website Mediapart then revealed that several left-wing personalities had been denigrated in content put online by another structure financed by the fund, “Reconstructing the common”, which obtained 330,000 euros.

Start of work next week

The Finance Committee of the Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, had unanimously asked on May 3, on the initiative of its PS president Claude Raynal, to be given the prerogatives of a commission of inquiry into the Marianne Fund. This request obtained this Wednesday morning the unanimous approval of the Law Commission, despite the opening, in the meantime, of a judicial investigation for suspicions of embezzlement of public funds in the management of this fund. Thanks to this green light, it will thus have for three months the important powers attributed to the commissions of inquiry: the people it wishes to audition are required to respond to the summons and take an oath.

This commission of inquiry, whose rapporteur will be Senator LR Jean-François Husson, should examine “the creation of the Marianne Fund, the selection of projects and the allocation of subsidies, the control of their execution and the results obtained in regard to the fund’s objectives.

It will begin its work next week with the hearing on Tuesday of the prefect Christian Gravel, secretary general of the interministerial committee for the prevention of delinquency and radicalization (CIPDR), and magistrate Jean-Pierre Laffite, deputy secretary general of the CIPDR. The CIPDR coordinates the action of the ministries and the use of the budgetary means devoted to the policy of prevention of delinquency and radicalization and as such, the general secretariat is in charge of the administrative management of the fund.