For the executive, the program for the week was tinged with green. Speech by Emmanuel Macron at COP27 in Egypt, Monday; meeting on the decarbonization of industry at the Elysée the next day. With these initiatives, the President of the Republic wanted to put the climate transition back at the top of his agenda. But Tuesday, November 8, a journalistic investigation came to hit this communication with revelations concerning the family of one of the figureheads of the government on this file, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for the energy transition.
According to the investigative site Disclose, Jean-Michel Runacher, the father of the minister, created in 2016 a company called Arjumen. Mme Pannier-Runacher would then have signed the documents authorizing three of his children – minors at the time – to become shareholders of the company for the symbolic sum of 10 euros each. Former leader of Perenco, France’s second crude oil producer, Mr. Runacher provided the rest of the capital: 1.2 million euros in the form of speculative investments. A way to escape his descendants from inheritance tax.
Tax heavens
According to the site, all of this heritage comes from hedge funds hidden in tax havens, in Ireland, Guernsey or Delaware, “in which Perenco held its own investments at the time”, write the journalists. On Tuesday, the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP) announced that it had launched “verifications” on the situation of the minister, who denies it en bloc.
Faced with attacks from part of the opposition, Mr.me Pannier-Runacher found herself forced to respond quickly on several points, including possible tax evasion involving her immediate family and the potential conflict of interest with the Perenco company. “I learned this morning of the false and libelous allegations published by Disclose », she told the National Assembly, Tuesday afternoon, during questions to the government. Before sweeping away the first suspicion: “This transmission took place through a French company subject to French taxation, by notarial deed established in Paris and in full compliance with the provisions applicable by French law. »
Regarding Perenco, a company that has made a specialty of buying oil or gas wells at the end of their life to exploit them to the maximum by producing at low cost, the Minister denied having been in a position to be influenced. “It is indeed a foreign company which carries out its oil activities outside France. I therefore did not have, in the context of my duties as minister, to know of the activities of this group.she said.
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