In a long running investigation, prosecutors in France have said they will pursue Alexis Kohler, Emmanuel Macron’s chief of staff, over a conflict of interest case relating to his alleged links with Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC).
Splash first reported on the investigation four years ago. The transparency campaign group Anticor launched a lawsuit in 2018 after the French investigative website Mediapart revealed that Kohler had family links to MSC, which has been a major user of French shipyards for cruiseship construction.
Kohler’s mother is a cousin of Rafaela Aponte, whose husband Gianlugi founded MSC in 1970. Mediapart has claimed that Kohler, while working for the finance ministry earlier in his career, hid his family links to MSC from the parliamentary ethics commission.
Mediapart also alleged that after leaving the finance ministry and becoming an executive of MSC in 2016, Kohler took part in at least one ministry meeting to discuss the fate of a STX, a French state-supported shipbuilding company.
Macron’s office and lawyers representing Kohler have repeatedly denied the president’s right-hand man has done anything wrong.
