McKinsey affair: what does Emmanuel Macron risk?

The links between Emmanuel Macron and McKinsey have definitely not finished talking. This is the first time that the current head of state has been directly targeted by a judicial inquiry. On October 20, 2022, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) opened a judicial investigation into suspicions of illegal financing of the President of the Republic’s election campaigns in 2017 and 2022.

As Le Parisien reveals, it is the links between the American consulting firm McKinsey and him that are targeted. The PNF has indeed specified that it has received reports and complaints from elected officials, individuals and associations on this subject. The investigation thus looks at the conditions for awarding certain public contracts to the company, including particularly high amounts.

The charges brought by this new judicial information are not negligible, since it is about “non-compliant maintenance of campaign accounts and reduction of accounting elements in a campaign account, relating to the conditions of intervention of consulting firms in the electoral campaigns of 2017 and 2022”.

These accusations are based on article L 113-1 of the electoral code, the very one which had caused the conviction at first instance in the former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy following the Bygmalion affair. Emmanuel Macron could thus risk up to three years in prison and a fine of 45,000 euros.

However, he enjoys, until the end of his term, presidential immunity and therefore cannot be heard or sentenced by judges and investigators. Solicited by our colleagues on Thursday, November 24, the Elysée declares for its part that it has “read the communication from the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office concerning the opening of two judicial inquiries following in particular complaints from elected officials and associations”, adding that it “is up to the judiciary to conduct these investigations independently.”