The Rachid M’Barki affair: the ramifications of an influence network

"We are going far beyond the case of Rachid M’Barki. With the former BFMTV presenter, we were at the end of the chain. From there, we went back up. We asked ourselves who was the sponsor of Rachid M’Barki, then who were the different principals of this sponsor. There, we realize that Jean-Pierre Duthion, the lobbyist who had ordered images from Rachid M’Barki, was receiving orders that came from Israel, sometimes from Morocco, sometimes from Qatar," explains Frédéric Métézeau, a journalist from the investigation unit of Radio France who participated in the vast investigation called "Story Killers," which revealed that the BFMTV journalist had been fired for broadcasting information serving foreign interests.

In January 2023, Rachid M’Barki was accused of having used the airtime to broadcast erroneous or highly biased information to serve foreign interests, between 2021 and 2022, without referring to his hierarchy, including a report on the organization of a Morocco-Spain economic forum in Dakhla, during which he used the term "Moroccan Sahara" instead of the term "Western Sahara," the term used by the French media. The elements of the BRDE thus fell on a large number of compromising messages for the former presenter of the famous crime news program "Faites entrer l’accusé" on RMC. These are confidential exchanges between the lobbyist Jean-Pierre Duthion, a man paid to defend the interests of clients, also indicted, and the journalist, exhumed from the phone of the former by the investigators.

"We discovered that there was a whole galaxy, a spider’s web of different influencers who were soliciting Jean-Pierre Duthion and the latter, in turn, was soliciting the channel he deemed most appropriate to get the message across. This could be either a journalist or a parliamentarian," Frédéric Métézeau further explains, who also participated in the journalistic investigation carried out by the Forbidden Stories collective, the investigation unit of Radio France and its partners including the newspaper Le Monde and published on Thursday, February 15. This investigation reveals the role of the politician Nabil Ennasri, one of the protagonists of this case, now indicted and incarcerated. He is suspected of having remunerated the parliamentarian from the Rhône, Hubert Julien-Laferrière, after making contact with him through the intermediary of Jean-Pierre Duthion.

"According to our information, Nabil Ennasri was in direct contact with Qatari authorities. This could be a Qatari Attorney General, a Qatari embassy. In direct connection with Qatar, he was soliciting Jean-Pierre Duthion who had direct links with journalists or elected officials. They formed a kind of tandem," summarizes the journalist. He says he discovered that it was this lobbyist "who had suggested" to the Rhône MP to "promote" a dubious African cryptocurrency. "It is still Jean-Pierre Duthion" who would have suggested to the deputy to criticize the policy of Benin in the National Assembly, while President Emmanuel Macron is due to go there. "Not through Nabil Ennasri, but through a Moroccan lobbyist. We are really in a nebula of influencers who are soliciting Jean-Pierre Duthion. The latter then transmits the message to the deputy Hubert Julien-Laferrière," Frédéric Métézeau adds.