Royal Rift: Macron and Morocco’s King Clash Over Pegasus Spyware Scandal

A telephone dispute had strained relations between Paris and Rabat. The second episode of the documentary series, entitled In the Presidents’ Phones, proposed and presented by Laurent Delahousse, which will be broadcast on Sunday, September 7 by France 5, looks back on a telephone call between King Mohammed VI and the French President Emmanuel Macron. In 2021, Morocco had been accused of using the Israeli software Pegasus to infiltrate the phones of several national and foreign public figures, including Emmanuel Macron, according to a vast investigation carried out by a consortium of international media based on data obtained by the organizations Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International.

"One of Emmanuel Macron’s two mobile phones, as well as those of fifteen of his ministers, were targeted. The authorities suspect Morocco, also a Pegasus client (a powerful spyware created by the Israeli company NSO Group, capable of discreetly hacking smartphones without the user’s knowledge, editor’s note), to be behind these intrusions," explains the voiceover of the program. At the time, the Moroccan government had categorically denied "these false and unfounded allegations" and had initiated several legal proceedings in France, Spain and Germany. In the wake of this, a tense telephone interview between King Mohammed VI and the French President.

"There was a phone call between the French Head of State and the King of Morocco that ended very badly," reveals journalist Laurent Richard in this episode of Laurent Delahousse’s documentary series. He then recounts: "The King of Morocco told him: ’I promise you, we did not spy on you.’ And the French President would have said: ’There are two things: either you are lying, or you do not know what is happening in your country.’ And that’s where the King of Morocco would have hung up on Emmanuel Macron."

After three years of estrangement, partly fueled by these espionage suspicions, Emmanuel Macron made a three-day state visit to Morocco in October 2024, sealing the reconciliation between Paris and Rabat.