“I do not organize dinners, no parties”, defends Pierre-Jean Chalençon

Pierre-Jean Chalençon, at the heart of the controversy over illegal dinners, defends himself on BFMTV. “I don’t organize dinners or parties. I am not organizing anything at the Palais Vivienne or elsewhere, ”he said.
on the continuous news channel this Tuesday, invoking humor. “It was a huge April Fool’s Day that worked,” he claimed, before explaining in more detail what it was.

“I gave a 45-minute conference where I showed the Palais Vivienne, where I took photos for the press, to organize these famous visits that I will be launching from May 5, since May 5 2021, it will be the bicentenary of the death of the emperor and that I am the guardian of this history ”, he explained. Before launching: “These people broke into my home, it’s a violation of the home, they interspersed with images. The Palais Vivienne organizes, per year, approximately 100 to 150 professional evenings, because I do not rent to individuals ”.

The “humor” argument

The controversy arose this Easter weekend with the broadcast of a report by M6 devoted to illegal dinners in the capital in times of pandemic and new confinement. A sequence particularly agitated first the social networks then the political sphere. The one where a man, with a modified voice, but quickly identified as Pierre-Jean Chalençon, boasts of organizing illegal dinners and of having been in several restaurants with “a certain number of ministers”.

Pierre-Jean Chalençon, through a press release from his lawyer on Sunday evening, implicitly acknowledged being this source. But he pleaded that he only made “humor” and wielded “a sense of the absurd”, when he assured that ministers participated in such meals.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin requested an administrative investigation from the Paris police prefect to verify the reported facts. Then the Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz opened a criminal investigation.