In Libya, Intermediaries and Lobbyists Ahead of French Diplomacy

Libyan Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, whose appointment is believed to be tainted by corruption according to a UN investigation, offered himself in 2018 for a million and a half Euros, and in a convoluted arrangement from Qatar, services provided by lobbyists and French intermediaries to become a presidential candidate while French diplomacy and the Élysée sought in vain to be at the core of the game.
The conferences of the world forum “Normandy for peace” follow one another on June 7 and 8, 2018. Hervé Morin, president of the Normandy region, opens the ball. Former ministers Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Hubert Védrine and former Russian Ambassador to France Alexandre Orlov are among the headliners. We have to wait for the sixth conference “What solutions for a new Libyan state?” for Abdelhamid Dbeibah to intervene.
Less than three years later, on February 5, 2021, the then-almost anonymous speaker was elected Prime Minister of Libya by a body consisting of seventy-five Libyans under the auspices of the UN which led an interminable process peace without succeeding in reuniting a country dislocated by a decade of wars. Three weeks later, a UN investigation leaked and claimed the election would be tainted with corruption. “Bribes of $ 150,000 to $ 200,000” were reportedly paid “to at least three participants in exchange for a pledge to vote for Abdelhamid Dbeibah.”
On February 5, when the businessman was nominated by a thin majority to form a transitional government in Libya, the Western powers fell from their prime. Starting with France, which did not bet on the veteran businessman of the Gaddafi era. However, in June 2018, Abdelhamid Dbeibah did not hide his ambitions when he rallied Caen in Normandy for a round table on his country alongside the former adviser and minister of Jacques Chirac, Frédéric de Saint-Sernin, reconverted in the humanitarian, or the researcher, specialist in Libya Mary Fitzgerald. He dreams of being the president of Libya no more and no less, and he is preparing to be a candidate.
To sell his image internationally and gain support, Abdelhamid Dbeibah specifically targets France, which he deems necessary, its political class and its economic decision-makers, and he provides the means: one and a half million Euros. Through a complex montage of Qatar, that Mediapart has procured, the businessman at the head of one of the richest fortunes of Misrata, Libya’s third largest city, a commercial crossroads between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara, receives the services of French lobbyists and intermediaries.
Abdelhamid Dbeibah dreams of becoming President of Libya at the very moment when Emmanuel Macron dreams of being the conductor of reconciliation in Libya. On May 29, 2018, the French president announces with fanfare “a historic Paris agreement” that has since fallen by the wayside, enacting presidential and legislative elections on December 10, 2018 in Libya (which will never take place), after having succeeded in bringing together the main actors of the Libyan political crisis in Paris, under the aegis of the United Nations. Finally, only part of the country is split between two poles of power in the east and the west, and conglomerates of militias.
If the activism of the French president did not weigh in the Libyan balance, he certainly gave the impression to the Libyan suitor that he had to plead his case in Paris. And that’s what Abdelhamid Dbeibah will try to do.
In April 2018, a Moroccan businessman, Seddik Bargach, met in Paris with a former politician and senior French official who had converted to lobbying. Former Enarque (1984-1986) assigned to the Council of State, Alexandre Medvedowsky is well known in Aix-en-Provence where he served in the Socialist Party (PS) up to the municipal council of the city. He then went through Laurent Fabius’s cabinet at the Assembly in the early 1990s. In 2001, he took leave of the administration and became a lobbyist within the ESL Network cabinet.
Alexandre Medvedowsky later took over as head of this cabinet, specializing in retraining former senior officials and diplomats. We find in particular the former sherpa of Jacques Chirac then of Nicolas Sarkozy, Jean-David Levitte; the intelligence coordinator of the Élysée at the time of François Hollande, Didier Le Bret, or the former ambassador and Emmanuel Macron’s special envoy to the Gulf, Bertrand Besancenot. But for the Libyan business that Seddik Bargach brings, none of these luxury consultants will be mobilized. On the contrary, a strange and discreet arrangement is favored with the signing of sub-contracts.
All dated the same day, the documents show Bargach signing $ 450,000 in business introducer fees for the Vermont, US-based company “Nord Sud Exchange”.
What contract does he bring? The outlines remain blurry, but the figures are clear. 1.5 million Euros from the Moroccan company Lemptos Impex to Agence Publics Qatar, the Doha branch of the firm chaired by Alexandre Medvedowsky, since dissolved.

Extracts from the 1.5 million Euro contract signed in Paris on April 20, 2018 and which binds Agence Publics Qatar and Leptos Impex.

Unclear on the mission, the document only indicates that “the consultant undertakes not to work with another party or other interests in Libya during the total duration of the contract”, which runs from April 2018 to April 2019, with 500,000 Euros for the first three months then 100,000 Euros monthly.
On the same date, and still in Paris, two engagement letters were signed between the Qatari subsidiary and the Parisian parent company for 900,000 Euros. 200,000 Euros are intended for Alexandre Medvedowsky for a vague mission “to accompany a candidate to the elections in Libya”. And 700,000 Euros to another consultant Jean-Christophe Bas for the same mission. The latter is known in particular for organizing the Rhodes Forum, a political and influential meeting organized by the Dialogue of Civilizations, the organization of Vladimir Putin’s close friend, Vladimir Lakunin, in charge of soft power missions in Europe.

The duo are expected to build and coordinate a team that “gives visibility” and “makes known” Abdelhamid Dbeibah “among the French political class and economic decision-makers”, “the press “, to “organize your agenda when traveling in France”, ensure” a press review on the Libyan geopolitical environment “, as well as a” reputation watch “.

Contacted by Mediapart, Alexandre Medvedowsky refuses to speak to us and to come back in detail on the contours of this mission. He refers us to his response by email in summer 2020 (see our Black box) where he assures that the contract lasted only three months without saying more, “in the name of confidentiality” required by “the nature of (our) activities”.

He also justifies the use of third-party companies:

“It is very common in all the contracts that we sign that we call on subcontractors or that we ourselves are subcontractors, all the expected services sometimes requiring professional skills that we do not have in full.”

Jean-Christophe Bas, for his part, denies having participated in the signing or the ultra-complex arrangement of the contract: “I did not know anything. The mission came to me through Alexander Medvedowsky.”  Even less to have touched 700,000 Euros: “This sum was not for me but certainly for Agence Publics. ”  As for the mission, it only lasted a few months, the consultant in turn assures us: ” I do not know why this contract did not last and whether the payments were made. But the million Euros, it was not for a single round table, we do not charge such amounts for so little.”

At the time, Jean-Christophe Bas, who has headed Public Agency for seven months, left for Berlin: “I left it on June 25, 2018.” He completes the organization for their client – the Normandy region – the “Normandy for Peace” forum for which their agency won a call for tenders: “The organizers wanted a conference devoted to Libya because it was concomitant with the Elysée summit, considered a failure. We came up with the name Abdelhamid Dbeibah which was then totally unknown.”

Jean-Christophe Bas, who recognizes a physical meeting with Abdelhamid Dbeibah at the Normandy for Peace summit, refutes any “lobbying” activity: “Public agency was an event-driven and strategic communication agency, it is not lobbying. Through call for tenders Dbeibah wanted to present in France his vision of his country. Nothing pejorative there. “

He also ensures that he is not the organizer of the meeting at the National Assembly in September 2018 which did not finally take place (mentioned at the time by Africa Intelligence) with the deputy of the presidential majority François Jolivet (LREM), President of the International Study Group on Libya: “I do not know this deputy and I did not organize this meeting.” Contacted by Mediapart, on MP François Jolivet  did not answer our calls nor did he answer our questions.

Jean-Christophe Bas is less verbose when it comes to talking about the partnership with a company specializing in influence on the Internet based in Tunis, URéputation: “We work with a certain number of agencies, it is very likely that a mission for the Dbeibah contract has been entrusted to them. ”

For years, this discreet company headed by Franco-Tunisian Lotfi Bel Hadj has carried out offensive communication missions for French companies from Tunis. Among its best-known clients in France, we find the football club Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) and the Islamologist indicted for rape Tariq Ramadan. But also abroad, an exclusive communication contract with the presidency of Togo and the Ivory Coast, as revealed by Africa Intelligence. A flourishing activity that was identified in the spring of 2020 and gave rise to a vast operation of Facebook page closings.

In January 2018, UReputation signed a subcontracting contract with Public Agency which notably included the Dbeibah contract. Twitter campaigns, assessment of account scopes and observation of account audiences dedicated to these influencing missions are thus carried out by UReputation teams. Until, again, the contract came to an abrupt end and Abdelhamid Dbeibah’s name disappeared from the radar. Contacted about this, Lotfi Bel Hadj declined to comment.

Had French institutions already identified Abdelhamid Dbeibah in 2018 as an actor who matters in the Libyan dossier? When you question the Élysée, the answer is concise: “We are in contact with everyone, at the appropriate level. This concerns Mr. Dbeibah the same as the others.”

Same response from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “France maintains permanent contacts with all Libyan actors. Among them, Mr. Abdelhamid Dbeibah. He has been one of our regular contacts for a long time.” The Quai d´Orsay specifies, however, that it received Abdelhamid Dbeibah in Paris in 2018. The ambassador in Tripoli also met him on several occasions, the ministry continues.

If the consultants and lobbyists who are busy in the shadows for this wealthy businessman seem to have a step ahead of French diplomacy and the Élysée, it is because Paris – which bears a great responsibility in the Libyan quagmire since the improvised war by former President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2011 – advances without benchmarks or influence in Libya.

In this country “key for the stability of the region, the fight against terrorism and the control of migratory flows”, as the “Elysean” advisers like to hammer it, where more than twenty countries make foreign interference , France has failed its own double game and helped pave the way for Russia and Turkey who have taken up residence in Libya and are pulling the strings of the conflict, each providing a camp in arms, soldiers and mercenaries.

“France is no longer in the race, actor of the case, it is marginalized,” concedes in off a French diplomat. “We pay the ambiguity maintained vis-à-vis Marshal Khalifa Haftar [the self-proclaimed head of the ‘Libyan National Army (ANL), powerful in eastern Libya, Cyrenaica and much of southern]. It took a helicopter crash to learn that there were French special forces secretly supporting Haftar, while officially supporting the internationally recognized government of Fayez El-Sarraj.”

France did not expect to see in the costume of interim Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, this member of the powerful Dbeibah family of Misrata who consolidated his fortune in the shadow of the dictatorship and system of Muammar Gaddafi by running the Libyan Investment and Development Company (LIDCO), a major state-owned construction company. Close to Saif el-Islam, the son of the ex-dictator driven out after forty-two years of power, who managed the major infrastructure programs, Abdelhamid Dbeibah climbed into Gaddafi’s first circle of trusted men and built on corruption, becoming one of the most successful businessmen in Misrata. However, he is far less influential than his parent and brother-in-law Ali Dbeibah.

The latter, also a wealthy businessman (one of 75 Libyans to vote for the new executive), who also owes his prosperity to Gaddafi, is being investigated in Libya and elsewhere with his brother Ibrahim Dbeibah for embezzlement. Ali Dbeibah was project leader of the other Libyan investment giant, the Organization for the Development of Administrative Centers (ODAC), which was tasked with upgrading Libyan infrastructure; Ibrahim Dbeibah directed it from 1989 to 2011.

Since the day after the 2011 revolution, the two brothers have been in the sights of the Tripoli authorities who have launched an Interpol red notice and a request for international assistance from Scotland to recover the goods and wealth that the country believes has been stolen. Still on the blacklist of Libyan figures suspected of having participated and enriched themselves with the Gaddafi system, they settled in Turkey.

In the shadow of these bulky relatives, Abdelhamid Dbeibah had not been identified by the French, and Westerners in general, as a candidate of the future. His past as a Gaddafist, his name associated with the influential Turkish relays as well as his running of a holding company with subsidiaries all over the world, including in Turkey— were all irreconcilable flaws.

If for some observers, his appointment could sign a political consensus between the two new sponsors of the great Libyan game – Moscow and Ankara -, it also acknowledges the rejection of the figures of the Libyan political class in recent years. In Paris and in Western capitals, it was instead betting on the ticket of the powerful Minister of the Interior Fathi Bashagha and the Speaker of the Libyan Parliament, Aguila Saleh, two personalities who were to be a link between the West and the East.

His contact with the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy in Libya had an important role as he was the one who helped him organize his last failed expedition, as Orient XXI [The leading newspaper for the Arab and Muslim world] had told. Fathi Bashagha, who has just escaped an assassination attempt, was the colt of the Quai d’Orsay and the Élysée. “The French liked the list of Bashagha who reassured them and who was not too bad a Minister of the Interior in the context. They got used to seeing Aguilah Saleh even if they didn’t get along,” said a diplomatic expert on Libya.

ust one month after his appointment, the legitimacy of the new interim Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah, expected to form a government, is already seriously questioned by suspicions of bribes of up to 200,000 Euros. The findings of the UN investigation are expected on 15 March. If the rumors of corruption, which have been circulating for several months and which have forced the UN to send in experts, are true, it is a blow for the UN organization which is caught in a dilemma: renounce the formation of an interim government that is to lead to elections on December 24, declare Dbeibah’s candidacy invalid, appoint Bashagha instead as prime minister or judge insufficient evidence and continue on an already chaotic path…

Who is not corrupt in Libya? It is urgent to organize elections in Libya to reunify the institutions. Until this reunification takes place, Libya will not move forward,” said a French diplomat.

But the suspicions of corruption put forward by UN experts question the intentions of the alleged corruptors. Who would be willing to buy the votes of the electors in hundreds of thousands of dollars? And for what purpose? For his part, the entourage of Abdelhamid Dbeibah describes these accusations as «lies» in order to destabilize a process undermined on all sides.

These perilous twists and turns hide badly a bitter observation. Ten years after the Western intervention in Libya, France is out of the game. Apart from ESL Network and Lotfi Bel Hadj, one of the few to have crossed paths with the new Libyan interim prime minister is Philippe Hababou Solomon. The winding French businessman saw Abdelhamid Dbeibah in London several times in 2014 and 2015.

“I saw him in a mansion on Manchester Square, trying to establish himself as a key player in the Libyan file. He already saw himself at the top of the bill”, explained last summer the intermediary who paid the headlines for having accompanied the former collaborator of Emmanuel Macron Alexandre Benalla in Chad. The world of intermediaries continues to be ahead of French diplomacy…

Black Box

The existence of Abdelhamid Dbeibah’s Libyan contract was revealed in the book Ces Français au Service de l’Etranger (These French in the Service of the Foreigner) by Clément Fayol, co-author of this article.

During the investigation for the publication of the book, Alexandre Medvedowsky replied in writing and assured that the contract lasted only three months without saying more, “in the name of confidentiality” required by “the nature of (our) activities ”.

Contacted again by Mediapart with a view to the publication of this new survey with new elements in our possession, Alexandre Medvedowsky refused to speak to us and to come back in detail on the contours of this mission. He referred us to his previous response, dated July 21, 2020:

“I have no response to your request regarding the mission you cite concerning Mr. Abdelhamid Dbeibah. You will easily understand that the nature of our activities requires a lot of confidentiality most of the time. I am telling you, however, that this contract lasted for three months. I also confirm that it is very frequent in all the contracts that we sign that we call on subcontractors or that we ourselves are subcontractors, all the expected services sometimes require professional skills that we don’t have in full. This is the main reason that can justify the use of third-party companies.”

Jean-Christophe Bas answered our questions on Monday March 1 during a telephone conversation. His answers contradict what he said last summer: “I met Mr. Dbeibah once in June 2018 during the World Peace Forum in Caen where he was speaking on a panel devoted to Libya. There were more than 80 other speakers from around the world at this Forum organized by the Normandy region, including Ban Ki moon, former Secretary General of the United Nations and Jean-Pierre Raffarin, former Prime Minister. Public Agency, which I was managing at the time, assisted the Region in organizing the event. A steering committee made up of international experts and headed by the Region decided on the choice of speakers. It is therefore not a collaboration with Mr. Dbeibah whom I have only come across that day like most of the speakers at the Forum. Public Agency did not organize any events for Mr. Dbeibah on July 27, 2020”.

Then “I can confirm that I only met Mr Dbeibah once during the Peace Forum in Caen and that I never carried out a lobbying mission for him. I understand that he had mandated the company ESL, holding of Public Agency, for a representation mission, but that was very brief, I believe 3 months, and I affirm not to have been associated with him. As you rightly point out, there is nothing pejorative about lobbying if it respects the rules set by the public authorities. In fact, I created and managed a JCB Eurostrategie consulting company almost 25 years ago. I managed Public Agency from November 2017 to June 2018, I should point out that it was not a lobbying company, but a strategic and event communication one. As such, Public Agency won the international call for tenders for the organization of the Francophone Summit in Armenia in 2018 and the World Peace Forum in Caen the same year.

Concerning the Dialogue of Civilizations Institute, its objective is to make a useful contribution to the reflection and implementation of new international cooperation mechanisms, and as such that its proposals are heard. It is a think tank activity, therefore promoting ideas and orientations, not lobbying.”

Moroccan businessman Seddik Bargach did not answer our calls. Questioned on Friday February 26 and Monday March 1, by telephone, LREM deputy François Jolivet did not respond to our calls nor did he answer our questions sent via SMS.

Lotfi Bel Hadj declined to comment on the participation of his company UReputation.

The Élysée responded to our questions with a short text message on Monday March 1, the Quai d´Orsay by an email on Monday March 1st.

Diplomats and officials who responded to Mediapart between February 24 and March 2 requested anonymity or that the exchanges be turned off.

Called and texted on his cell phone, Abdelhamid Dbeibah did not answer. If he answered, we would add his answers to the article.