It was a revelation from the Blast media: the couple formed by Jérôme and Valérie Pécresse, the latter being the president of the Ile-de-France region, “owns shares in Alstom”, even though she presides over the authority transport company Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM). Following these revelations, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) decided to open an investigation, AFP tells us, from a judicial source.
Two elected environmentalists from the Île-de-France regional council and a deputy mayor of Paris announced that they would take legal action on February 21, when the president of the Ile-de-France region was a candidate in the presidential election. “Very clearly, there is a real problem between the function of president and the fact of holding important interests in one of the operators. The transport code is clear, we cannot be bound by interests to operators who work with IDF Mobilités”, then said David Belliard, deputy (EELV) to the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo (PS).
Arrangement by trust
These elected officials rely on an article in January of the online media Blast, according to which the president of the region had “invisibilized” shares of Alstom that she held with her husband so that they no longer appear in her declarations of interest. Jérôme Pécresse worked at Alstom until the takeover of the group’s energy activities by General Electric in November 2015. A possible illegal taking of interests.
A month later, Valérie Pécresse was elected head of the region and quickly created, according to Blast, a trust, arrangement also known by the Anglo-Saxon term of trust, so that a bank manages this portfolio of shares for them. . Since then, IDFM has ordered nearly 2.4 billion euros in rolling stock from Alstom, according to elected environmentalists.
“Mr. Pécresse sold all Alstom shares”
“However, Ms. Pécresse did not abstain from participating during this period in the examination of the files and the choice of the companies submitted to the vote of the CA […] which led to the choice of Alstom as a supplier, […] while she and her husband were holders of financial assets of this company”, they affirmed.
“After the start of his mandate, neither he nor he were ever again owners of Alstom shares, nor interested in the results of the company or the evolution of the share price”, had then recalled the entourage of Valérie Pécresse. “Mr. Pécresse immediately sold all the Alstom shares” he owned after the election of his wife. A trust was set up with a bank to receive the balance of the “non-transferable” shares and sell them once they have become transferable at a price lower than the share price, the same source specified.