“Cash Investigation” highlights the “Chicxulub” around Macron in 2017, what is it about?

TELEVISION – France 2 has brought out the special effects and dinosaur costumes. The public service is broadcasting this Tuesday, September 17 in the evening an issue of Cash Investigation devoted to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential campaign in 2017. The star of this episode: the role of the consulting firm McKinsey, several of whose employees were in the fold of the former Minister of the Economy before his accession to the Élysée.

The documentary notably gives the floor to a witness who attended a dinner in October 2015 who wished to remain anonymous. At the table, Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron, bosses, members of the minister’s office, but also several McKinsey employees including, according to this witness, Karim Tadjeddine, at the time head of the public sector for the consulting firm. It was he who allegedly had the idea of ​​launching the ” Chixculub “.

Behind this name, a reference to the crater that formed in Mexico after the fall of the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, but also, in a figurative way of representing the ” New World “, a project, working on ” the future » by Emmanuel Macron. According to Mediapart, the « Chicxulub ” was made official in April 2016, again by Karim Tadjeddine, via an email sent from his professional address.

McKinsey too involved with candidate Macron?

The latter, like two other McKinsey employees, is said to have worked for free to launch a platform to enable citizens to mobilize for the presidential campaign. “As early as 2015 and 2016, members of McKinsey prepared the campaign,” supports the previously cited witness.

The investigation of Cash Investigationwhich also echoes several articles from Mediaparthighlights internal documents supporting several questions about the place that McKinsey had, and in what context, in the president’s first campaign. In this matter, the law is particularly strict since corporate donations are strictly prohibited, of any nature whatsoever.

Neither Karim Tadjeddine nor McKinsey agreed to answer questions from Cash InvestigationThe first assures to have committed ” in a personal capacity “, when the firm recalls the right of its employees to take part in political activities” in compliance with the law and on a personal basis”.

During Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term, McKinsey, which did not pay taxes in France for 10 years according to a senatorial investigation, benefited from more than 70 million euros in public contracts. In November 2022, The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office has confirmed the opening of two judicial investigations into the role of consulting firms in the 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns.

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