French minister Marlène Schiappa gave testimony on Wednesday in a Senate inquiry over allegations that a fund to fight religious extremism she managed funnelled public money to people close to her.
As France’s minister for associations, Schiappa, set up the Marianne Fund in response to the 2020 murder of Samuel Paty – a teacher who was beheaded outside his school in the Paris suburbs by a Muslim extremist who was angry Paty had showed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a class about free speech.
The fund was initially given a pot of public money worth €2.5 million to support associations aiming to counter Islamist extremism online.
But allegations of embezzlement have cast a shadow over Schiappa – a high-profile figure in President Emmanuel Macron’s government – and triggered a Senate probe and an investigation by financial prosecutors.
During more than three hours of questioning before the Senate on Wednesday, the minister said she would take “responsibility” for her part in the scandal, even as she denied any wrongdoing and sought to shift the blame onto her administration.
Accusations of embezzlement
Schiappa, then deputy minister for civic rights, set up the Marianne Fund in April 2021, six months after Paty was murdered aiming to create a “counter narrative” to online extremism.
Two years later, with Schiappa now a cabinet minister, multiple French media outlets began to raise questions over how payouts from the fund were being awarded and used.
Investigations by news magazine Marianne and France 2 television found that the biggest payout had gone to one organisation, the Union des sociétés d’éducation physique et de préparation militaire (USEPPM), which received €355,000. The money went towards a single website and a collection of anti-extremist videos, social media posts and articles that found almost no audience online.
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