Nicolas Berggruen; Goulard sitting next to Macron
Fired French defence minister was on payroll of an American think tank
The former Armed Forces Minister Sylvie Goulard was paid 10,000 euros a month by an American institution for at least two years. This is the real reason for her sudden departure, French radio Europe1 revealed.
Published: June 27, 2017, 10:06 am
Since Tuesday after her announcement, there has been complete silence. Sylvie Goulard too is silent. She has had no contact with her former friends of the MoDem party, with whom she has already fallen out.
Goulard, who only took up her post in Emmanuel Macron’s administration a month ago, stepped down on Tuesday. She is the second high-profile minister to go in less than 24 hours.
According to French sources, the short-lived Minister of the Armed Forces called president Emmanuel Macron last Sunday to express her wish to leave the government. The President, surprised, asked her to take time for a reflection of twenty-four hours because he had wanted her to stay.
Several exchanges took place with the Prime Minister, who also tried to make her change her mind, but the German-speaking Goulard had her last contact with the head of state on Monday to clarify her departure. Emmanuel Macron’s government was forced to release the news of her resignation the next morning. “Those who say that she was pushed towards the exit by the Elysee in order to cause the fall of [MoDem leader Francois] Bayrou are mistaken, Macron was furious,” a close relation of the minister told Europe1.
In the Anglo-Saxon press, the news of Goulard’s departure was presented as a decision by Macron, to “clean house”. The BBC, Financial Times as well as the Guardian made zero mention of the Armed Forces minister being on the payroll of the Americans.
Officially, the story goes that she left in order to “freely demonstrate” her good faith in the investigation of MoDem assistants in the European Parliament “misusing funds”.
Macron’s government and the British press seem extremely eager to take the focus off Goulard’s links to a Californian think tank.
“I need tranquility,” Sylvie Goulard told Europe1. The former minister remarked: “We are coming out of a presidential campaign where the French want politics to be different … The political class must ask itself the question of the renewal of its practices and its rules.”
Le Canard enchaîné revealed this week that when she was a member of the European Parliament, she had noted on her declaration of interests to the Strasbourg Parliament, that she was a “special adviser” to the “Berggruen Institute” for an income of “over 10,000 euros monthly”.
According to our sources, through her own consulting company, she was paid by this institute from October 2013 to January 2016. “Everything was declared and these sums were gross amounts,” insists a relative of the former minister.
Created and financed by Nicolas Berggruen, son of the wealthy art dealer Heinz Berggruen, the Berggruen Institute, based in California, is a non-profit organisation responsible for “thinking about governance systems”. Berggruen was brought up in Paris and holds dual German and American citizenship. Goulard, on her way to the Quai d’Orsay, had already been backed by his organisation to the tune of $300,000.
“The Berggruen promotes the European Union and contributes to the debate of ideas,” she said. Money paid to her was not an issue, she added.
Listed on the American institute’s advisory board are well-know globalists: Arianna Huffington, co-founder of leftist The Huffington Post; the SpaceX founder Elon Musk; Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and alleged war criminal; Francis Fukuyama, the Stanford professor; and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Goulard was totally unprepared for defense questions, but her contact with the General Staff of the Army went rather well,” an insider source said. Most are speculating that Goulard’s American links has stirred up powerful interests at the European level, which will be able to “break up certain French industrial facilities”.
A total of 19 French MEPs are under preliminary investigation. MoDem said in a statement that it had “respected all the rules and employer regulations”. But the investigation into “misused funds” is a decoy.
“The president of the republic is working to restore confidence in public action, reform France and relaunch Europe,” Goulard said in a statement on Tuesday. “This work should take precedence over any personal consideration,” she added.
“Defence is a demanding portfolio. The honour of our armies, of the men and women who serve and put their lives in danger should not be mixed up in controversies that have nothing to do with them.”
On Monday, Richard Ferrand, minister for territorial cohsion and the general secretary of Macron’s fledgling political party La République en Marche (La REM – Republic on the Move) resigned after he was put under preliminary investigation for nepotism and financial impropriety.
The departure of Ferrand, a close friend of Macron, was sold in the media as a promotion, as he will now lead the REM parliamentary group.
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