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French minister quits over luxury lobster and fine wine dinners

The French minister at the centre of a scandal over the dinners he hosted with giant lobsters and €500-a-bottle wines has quit blaming a "media lynching".

Published: 16 July 2019 15:42 CEST

French minister quits over luxury lobster and fine wine dinners

Francois de Rugy, pictured wit his wife Sevrine, has resigned. Photo: AFP

Environment minister François de Rugy had been under fire over claims that the publicly-funded luxury dinners he hosted had little connection to his political work.

Only at the weekend he had vowed to resist pressure to quit and instead stay on as minister.

But on Tuesday he resigned blaming a “media lynching” that prevented him from now doing his job.

In a lengthy statement on his Facebook page, de Rugy wrote: “The attacks and media lynching have driven me today to take the necessary step – which everyone will understand.

“The attacks and media lynching targeting my family force me to take the necessary step back,” said de Rugy, who also held the post of minister of state which made him the number two in government after Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

“The effort required to defend my name means that I am not able to serenely and efficiently carry out my mission. I presented my resignation to the prime minister this morning,” he added.

Government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye then announced that the resignation had been accepted.

The investigative news site Mediapart website had said the minister in Emmanuel Macron's La Republique En Marche party had hosted a dozen extravagant dinners from 2017-2018 when he the head of the French parliament.

François de Rugy announced his resignation on his Facebook page

De Rugy did not deny hosting the dinners at his former residence, but vigorously rejected the claim they had been purely social events not linked to his job.

The dinners reportedly included champagne, giant lobsters and a €500 bottle of wine that had been signed by Prince Charles.

The pressure further mounted when he was accused of renting a subsidised council flat despite being on a higher salary than would be allowed, but on Friday he defiantly vowed that he would not resign.

He told French TV station BFMTV he has “never paid more than €30 for a bottle of wine”, doesn't eat lobster because of a “shellfish allergy”, and avoids champagne, which “gives him a headache”.

Best detail in story about calls for resignation of French minister François de Rugy because of his taxpayer-funded gourmet dinners is that he was serving £500 plus bottles of Entente Cordiale Mouton Rothschild 2004 signed by Prince Charles. pic.twitter.com/EWHhyYDjdB

— Peter Allen (@peterallenparis) 10 July 2019

But on Tuesday Mediapart's chief Edwy Plenel said the resignation had been triggered by new elements of website's investigation that accused de Rugy, a member of France's green group EELV, of spending his MP's allowance on paying his political party fees – something forbidden in the rules.

“We are doing our work in the public interest,” said Plenel after the minister's resignation. Rugy plans to sue the investigative site Mediapart for defamation accusing it of a desire “to harm, smear and destroy.”

The scandal had been embarrassing for French president Macron who since his election had been labelled a “president for the rich” and was accused of being out of touch with the concerns of ordinary French people.

De Rugy, who is from an aristocratic background, is a former environmental activist who joined Macron's party during his successful bid for the presidency in 2017.

He became ecology minister after the resignation of the high-profile figure Nicolas Hulot who quit the government after becoming frustrated with the government's lack of progress on green reforms.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.