Marianne Fund: after the publication of a severe report, the prefect Christian Gravel resigns

The Marianne fund affair has its first concrete consequence: in a press release published on the evening of Tuesday June 6, the Ministry of the Interior announces that it has accepted the resignation of the prefect Christian Gravel, secretary general of the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Delinquency and radicalization (CIPDR).

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This departure is announced at the same time as the publication of a severe report by the General Inspectorate of Administration (IGA) on the conditions for the allocation of this manna of 2.5 million euros, announced by Marlène Schiappa in response to the terrorist assassination, in October 2020, of Professor Samuel Paty. The magazine Marianne and France Télévisions had revealed at the end of March that two associations with dubious practices had captured the largest amounts of subsidies, and raised strong suspicions of collusion between their managers and the pilots of the Marianne fund, M^me Schiappa, then Minister for Citizenship, and Mr. Gravel.

The IGA report focuses on just one of the associations subsidized by the Marianne fund, the Union of Physical Education and Military Preparation Societies (USEPPM), recipient of 355,000 euros in subsidy. The association was then led by the essayist Mohamed Sifaoui, very much in court with Marlène Schiappa as well as with the CIPDR, within which he provided training, according to information from the World.

“Biased” call for projects

According to the story of the prefect Gravel before the senatorial commission of inquiry devoted to this affair, which heard him on May 16, Mr. Sifaoui allegedly called him directly after a meeting with the minister to inform him of his interest in applying to the Marianne fund. In reality, explains the IGA, Mr. Sifaoui – whose rapporteurs denounce the lack of cooperation during their investigation – was already to benefit from a subsidy from the CIPDR, which was then redirected to the fund during the meeting on the allocation of the latter, which was held in a reduced committee, on May 21. Attended by Mr. Gravel, his assistant, the chief of staff of Mr.^me Schiappa, Sébastien Jallet and two other people.

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The project of “republican counter-speech” of Mr. Sifaoui, iLaïc, was already classified as “raising no difficulty” and was part of the twenty pre-selected files. This choice to include projects that have already been subsidized, but “reassigned” to the Marianne fund constitutes, in the eyes of the inspectors, the sign of a call for projects ” biased “.

Another irregularity noted by the report, the iLaïc project, which initially requested 635,000 euros in aid, before presenting a new, less ambitious file – to the chagrin of “one of the project leaders” which would have been, according to the report ” irritated “ during a meeting on this subject – did not present any funder other than the CIPDR, even though this is the rule for this type of grant.

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