Free… For now. Alexandre Benalla and his wife were released from custody on Wednesday evening, we learned on Thursday from sources close to the case and the judiciary. The couple had been heard since Tuesday morning in the Parisian premises of the Economic Crime Repression Brigade (BRDE) for “suspicions of money laundering, aggravated tax fraud, forgery and use of forgery, abuse of social property, trafficking influence and corruption ”.
If the former Elysee mission manager and his wife were released without prosecution, “the investigations are continuing” in this investigation conducted under the authority of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) and which is interested in at least two contracts signed with two Russian oligarchs. Contacted, Alexandre Benalla’s lawyer could not be reached on Thursday morning.
Benalla denies having participated in the negotiations
The financial magistrates wonder about the role that Alexandre Benalla would have played in the signing of a first contract with the sulphurous oligarch Iskander Makhmudov, while he was in post at the Elysee, as deputy to the chief of staff of the president Emmanuel Macron in charge of security issues. This contract was signed in June 2018 between his ex-acolyte Vincent Crase, convicted with him in November in the trial of the violence committed during the demonstrations of May 1, 2018, and Iskander Makhmudov, via the company Mars of the ex-employee of LREM.
Before the senatorial commission of inquiry into this violence, Alexandre Benalla had assured that he had not taken part in the negotiation of this contract. It was “a very clear contract, signed by lawyers, and not a false contract as I could read it sometimes”, explained Vincent Crase in April 2019, during an interview with Paris Normandy, claiming to have “never met” the Russian oligarch.
Another contract matter with Akhmedov
The PNF and BRDE are also interested in a contract signed with another Russian oligarch, Farkhad Akhmedov, businessman and former senator, who made his fortune especially in the energy sector.
During his trial in September for the violence of May 1, Alexandre Benalla said he had moved to Morocco after his dismissal from the Elysee Palace and had founded a consultancy structure, speaking of a contract with Farkhad Akhmedov for an amount of 353,000 euros, “declared to the tax authorities”, he insisted