Culture Minister Rachida Dati reportedly received €299,000 in fees from GDF Suez in 2010-2011

An investigation has uncovered documents from a law firm suggesting that Rachida Dati received €299,000 in undeclared "fees" from GDF Suez in 2010-2011 when she was an MEP and lawyer.

The magazine "Complément d'enquête", which will be broadcast Thursday evening on France 2, and Le Nouvel Observateur compare these payments to " positions favorable to the gas sector " by Rachida Dati when she sat in the European Parliament (2009-2019).

The Minister of Culture, who is also under investigation for passive corruption in the Carlos Ghosn affair , has always denied any contractual link with the French gas group, renamed Engie in 2015, and has denied any conflict of interest.

"GDF Suez honorary data"

"Ms. Dati has given all her explanations and has never been the lawyer for GDF Suez ," her lawyers, Olivier Baratelli and Olivier Pardo, insisted to AFP on Wednesday.

Painting a portrait of Ms. Dati as a political "bulldozer," the Complément d'enquête, which AFP viewed on Wednesday, reveals the existence of documents that are not currently in the hands of the courts and which allegedly prove that Ms. Dati was paid by the French giant.

These documents come from the accounts of a law firm liquidated in 2019 and show the receipt of two transfers of 149,500 euros each from GDF Suez and dated July 2010 and February 2011.

Each time, a few weeks after these transactions, the same sums were disbursed by the firm to Rachida Dati with the mention "Dati honoraires GDF Suez", according to the documents revealed by the two media outlets.

Contacted by AFP, Engie did not immediately respond.

Amendments in favor of gas groups

Ms. Dati has been questioned several times about her links with GDF Suez, notably by the judges in charge of the Ghosn affair .

At the end of 2013, centrist MEP Corinne Lepage expressed surprise at Rachida Dati's support for the demands of major energy groups, including GDF Suez, for an end to subsidies for renewables .

Interviewed in Complément d'enquête, Ms Lepage confirmed that she was also surprised by the amendments tabled by Ms Dati in Strasbourg in favour of the gas groups.

In the Ghosn affair, Nicolas Sarkozy's former justice minister has been under investigation since 2021 over €900,000 in legal fees she allegedly received between 2010 and 2012 from a Dutch subsidiary of the Renault-Nissan alliance.

The courts are investigating whether this income may have masked lobbying activities, which are prohibited for MEPs. Ms. Dati denies any irregularity.