McKinsey in France: The ‘Pro-Bono Scandal’ is Only the Beginning

How a consultancy giant like McKinsey, has made a speciality of advising “straw men” such as French President Emmanuel Macron, to secure their presidency.

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In France, the Parquet National Financier (PNF), a high-level French judicial institution, is auditing the financing of Emmanuel Macron’s previous presidential campaigns.

The results are more than disturbing, and also expose an even bigger scandal previously reported by 21WIRE, namely, the globalist and stealth corporate takeover of the French government revealed in “McKinseyGate: France’s Shadow Government and the Rise of the Corporate State.” 

French judges are currently investigating the financing of Macron’s 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns, and more importantly, the role played by the shadowy international firm, McKinsey & Co, a Delaware, USA, registered global consulting firm with offices in France, and who partners with the World Economic Forum in Davos. McKinsey spent countless hours and efforts on a pro bono (free of charge) basis, to ensure French President Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the run-up to the presidency. What were they expecting in return?

According to a Le Parisien article, and an investigative report from “Franceinfo”, the victorious campaigns of Macron and McKinsey have been targeted by the French Financial Prosecutor’s Office, which announced that investigations were well underway into the true role of consulting firm during the 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns.

The French Financial prosecutor of the Republic Jean-François Bohnert declared:

“Following several reports and complaints from elected officials and individuals, a judicial investigation was opened on October 20, 2022, including charges of non-compliant keeping of campaign accounts and reduction of accounting elements in a campaign account, relating to the conditions under which consulting firms have intervened in the presidential election campaigns of 2017 and 2022 “

The investigation was also opened on the counts of “favoritism and concealment of favoritism,” added the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office in its statement.

Although the PNF did not confirm which consultancy firm was being investigated, a Le Parisien article dated November 2022, confirms that it is indeed McKinsey consulting firm which the French judiciary is investigating in conjunction with Macron’s presidential campaign accounts covering both election cycles.

According to French law, President Emmanuel Macron will not be heard before the end of his mandate, “given the total and absolute immunity conferred to him by his status as President of the French Republic”.

For our part, we wrote an article in March 2022 which blew open the full story about McKinsey & Co, and it’s dubious role in subsuming the Macron government, including their takeover of the functions of entire ministries, and in running the government’s disastrous Covid mRNA vaccine roll-out. As a result of media exposure of this scandal, the consultancy firm found itself in hot water during the 2022 presidential campaign but also during the course of an earlier enquiry launched in late March of 2022 by the French Senate – including the government’s use of consulting firms throughout the course of the COVID-19 crisis. In effect, the parliamentarians had revealed that the contracts concluded between the State and these consulting firms had “more than doubled” between 2018 and 2021 to reach the record amount of over 1 billion euros in 2022, and one of the biggest beneficiaries of these contracts was McKinsey.

During this senate enquiry, it was also revealed that McKinsey’s branch in France practices tax optimisation.

“A preliminary investigation was opened on March 31, 2022, on the charge of aggravated laundering of aggravated tax fraud targeting the McKinsey group and in particular the companies McKinsey & Company Inc. France and McKinsey & Company Inc. SAS,” recalled the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office on November 24.

Officially, McKinsey’s French activities are managed by a company domiciled in the state of Delaware in the United States. A typical shell entity in a small tax haven, which does not tax profits made outside the USA. As for taxable income in France, they are offset by fees charged by the Delaware company to the Paris office. Thus the profits declared in France have melted, and of course, the taxes with them.

Currently, three investigating judges have been appointed to conduct this investigation, including Serge Tournaire, currently dean of the financial division at the Paris judicial court. The same magistrate who had indicted François Fillon in 2017 in the investigation into the fictitious jobs of his wife Penelope, as well as former French president Nicolas Sarkozy who was convicted in a campaign financing scandal, known as the Bygmalion case.

Another judicial investigation was opened for “favoritism” and “concealment of favoritism” to determine whether or not McKinsey has obtained, in exchange for these pro bono services, public contracts in an undue manner, once Emmanuel Macron ascended to power. New raids took place on 22nd March 2023 at the home of Clarisse Magnin, Managing Director of McKinsey France, and at the home of a former collaborator of the President of the Republic.

French media Le Monde had already revealed that McKinsey had collaborated in the electoral campaign of the President of the Republic in 2017. In addition, “McKinsey employees have joined positions within the presidential party La République en Marche! or ministerial cabinets,” adds Le Parisien.

Many are calling this a corporate coup. As ours and other investigations have demonstrated, this is no exaggeration at all.

In parallel, the investigation conducted by Radio France’s investigative cell and reported by Géraldine Hallot, Radio France, revealed on April 4, 2023, that a dozen consultants of the company would have participated in an “active” role using “intrusive” ways to not only shape but also insert themselves in Macron’s 2017 and 2022 presidential election campaigns. The media also reveals being in contact with a former McKinsey executive who describes the consulting firm’s work for political party “En Marche” during the presidential campaign – as services that should have been “invoiced and declared” in the accounts of candidate Macron.

Radio France Investigative Unit report on McKinsey-Macron scandal:

Of course, this case is not an isolated one, and it is hard not to look at McKinsey’s pro bono services for government and their affiliates as a well-rehearsed operative model. We have been able to observe such practice in detail not only in France but also in other countries such as South Africa, Australia, and even in Ukraine.

In an article published by The Guardian on March 1, 2023, we can read the headline:

“They’re lobbying for Ukraine pro bono – and making millions from arms firms”

McKinsey & Company Ukraine website:

Despite their appearance, McKinsey & Co has kept their Moscow office open to provide support to its 400-plus local colleagues whilst being heavily involved in various projects in Ukraine, especially in financial services, energy, and of course the public sector.

It has now become obvious that McKinsey created the “Macron Entity” with the drafting of Macron Law No2, also known as “NOA’S Law” and the creation of his political party “En Marche”. McKinsey also reproduced the very same pattern in Ukraine with the rise of Zelensky as a political celebrity and “Servant of the People.”

One must then suspect that these two “heads” of state have demonstrated over and over their ability to perfectly regurgitate the scenarios dictated by McKinsey.

Looking into former McKinsey executive Oleksandr Danylyuk – who happened to serve as a special advisor to the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service at the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, and also as Minister of Finance of Ukraine in 2016 – we can better understand how Zelensky had managed to rack-up such a gigantic debt with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), while devising a deadly strategy for the Donbass region which eventually led to the full-scale war we are now seeing in Ukraine.

Danylyuk worked for three years in McKinsey’s offices in London, but also in Moscow. His projects included the reform of the UK tax system, as well as the development of strategies and the optimization of operations in energy and telecommunications projects. Danylyuk and McKinsey developed the strategy for the Economic Reform Coordination Center of Ukraine. The firm drafted their proposals and government documents in cooperation with the IMF.

SEE ALSO: McKinseyGate: France’s Shadow Government and the Rise of the Corporate State

As a result of this information, the current chatter among independent researchers and journalists about the true nature of McKinsey is getting increasing traction, many of whom are now asking if McKinsey is a CIA asset used to penetrate and steer governments around the world. We can start with the fact that McKinsey is already embedded inside the CIA and other US intelligence agencies, followed by credible accusations about their murky activities working in and around foreign governments.

But it does not stop there, as it turns out, McKinsey also intervened to stop the North Stream 2 project. As McKinsey’s Ukrainian head consultant Danyliuk declared:

“We see NordStream 2 pipeline as a security threat”.

Who in their right mind could still contest that the recent Nordstream 2 pipeline sabotage was a US intelligence job?

Furthermore, the consulting giant had previously come under scrutiny for its work with state-owned companies in China, Russia (Rostec), and with notorious opioid manufacturers, forcing legacy media such as NBC News to report on McKinsey’s conflict of interests, and lack of ethics in working for both US and US rivals’ clients such as Russia and China, at the same time.

Source: consultancy.eu

That tells us all we need to know about this unscrupulous company that has infiltrated the French government at the highest level and that somehow was allowed to provide countless hours, worth millions of Euros of consultancy services to put their banking clients’ favourite candidate on the throne of France.

This Politico article (ER: useful, from early 2021) describes very well how “a new breed of French bureaucrats that have been prowling the Parisian corridors of government power. High-powered consultants from firms like McKinsey, Accenture, BCG and Capgemini are over the years playing ever-more important roles in delivering basic government services, replacing, or even displacing, a generation of public civil servants,” and adds, “France is by no means the only country to have turned to the private sector to help run the state’s affairs. Many of its neighbors, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Switzerland — have relied on consultancies for years, if not decades”. We would also feel comfortable adding Canada to this non-exhaustive list.

McKinsey has made a speciality of advising “straw men” reads another article from French media Geopolintel, describing a firm that possesses the ‘art of language’ to be able to win election votes. Hiring a consultancy firm such as McKinsey raises the bar of what should be considered an acceptable risk for the State without compromising France’s national security. In this instance, McKinsey’s architectural work behind the “En Marche” political program and their relentless efforts to secure Macron’s presidential seat, must be seen as a direct contravention to France’s electoral due process.

For now, we can only hope the ongoing investigations will reveal how deeply this consultancy firm was allowed to penetrate a cross-section of France’s public sector, but we must also hope such investigation alerts the European Institutions targeted by the firm as described on their ‘McKinsey Center for the EU’ web page.

The implications of this PNF investigation are far-reaching, especially if Macron and his campaign outfit were to be found guilty of these accusations – which potentially could invalidate one if not both of his presidential mandates.

A true regime change in France.

France is only the beginning. If the electorates in these various countries actually knew how deeply McKinsey and other similarly opaque private US consultancy firms were embedded within the halls of their respective governments, there would most certainly be a public uproar.

To our knowledge, there is no provision in French law allowing consultancy firms to provide and deliver substantial pro-bono services to presidential campaigns(ers) because it is wrong, especially when such work is not reflected in the campaign accountancy books. Hence, any form of support must be declared to the financial campaign auditors, and if consultancy services were not invoiced, it naturally invites for further investigation to establish how, or if, the consultancy firm in question has been compensated by other means such as public contracts. Of course, following the money is only the beginning, and will likely lead further up the chain than many can imagine, including to McKinsey clients like vaccine giant Pfizer, and also to McKinsey’s global partner, the WEF. Here we can see a real globalist spider’s web coming into view.

This is only the beginning and hopefully, no stones will be left unturned.

Keep your eyes peeled for updates…

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Author Freddie Ponton is an independent researcher and journalist based in France, with a keen interest in European politics, geopolitics and NATO, international criminal investigations, as well as corporate and military intelligence. See more of Freddie’s work at his archive here. 

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Source

Featured image, Zelensky: President.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Featured image, Macron: Andalou Agency