An article published on 26 September in flaremagazine.co.uk.
An article published on 26 September in flaremagazine.co.uk. © flaremagazine.co.uk

A wave of articles began appearing in Azerbaijani media at the end of September concerning an alleged corruption case involving Alexandre Benalla, a former official at French President Emmanuel Macron's Élysée Palace turned security consultant, and Anass Derraz, the Middle East director of French water company Saur (IO, 23/08/22), presented as one of his acquaintances.

Media including the Azerbaijani Press Agency (APA) and Trend News Agency used an article published on 26 September at flaremagazine.co.uk as their reference. This website uses the same name as a now-defunct fashion magazine and in June began being used for various e-reputation campaigns. This modus operandi - naming a new site for information operations after an old, well-known media title - is a familiar one, first used a few years ago by private Western players before being taken up directly by state operators.

Deliberate confusion

The site in question had not previously published any articles about Azerbaijan. However, one after the other, the country's main media picked up the text of the flaremagazine article word for word, exploiting confusion over the website's name. The article, headlined "Are Emmanuel Macron's companions under investigation in Azerbaijan?", reignited the information battle between Paris and Baku.

Intelligence Online can reveal that a similar text was already in circulation several weeks before this latest publication, relayed by the Azerbaijani lawyer of Martin Ryan, a French national detained in Azerbaijan and accused of spying for France's foreign intelligence agency DGSE (IO, 27/05/24). Ryan's lawyer in Baku, mandated by Azerbaijani justice, tried to get the article republished in French media. The fact that these two channels were used at the same time to push the article shows where the information campaign originated.

A new wheel in the machine

The article in question refers to a contract Benalla signed with Russian-Azerbaijani businessman Farkhad Akhmedov, as revealed in 2019 by Mediapart. Intelligence Online has not obtained any evidence to support the allegations of collusion between the former Elysée Palace employee and Derraz in connection with this contract. When contacted, Benalla confirmed knowing Derraz but denied the allegations reported in Azerbaijani media.

Derraz's name does however appear in an investigation carried out by Baku's internal security service (DTX) into Akhmedov, who, according to our sources, is in hot water with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev's government. Based in Dubai for Saur, Derraz was arrested in July while on a business trip to Baku. According to his lawyer in Paris, he was forced to sign documents written in Azerbaijani when he was arrested, without the presence of an interpreter. He remains under house arrest in Baku.

Jailed in Baku since last December, Martin Ryan's detention has been extended until early January. French film set designer and artist Théo Clerc was sentenced to three years' imprisonment by an Azerbaijani court in early September for graffiti on the Baku metro (IO, 17/09/24).

The DTX has been at loggerheads with the DGSE since the tit-for-tat expulsions of intelligence officers from the embassies in Paris and Baku at the end of 2023 (IO, 12/02/24).

Public relations

Ironically, Saur's public relations agency is none other than Havas, which also relays the activities of the Free Armenian Prisoners organisation in the French-speaking world. The group campaigns for the release of a handful of Armenian nationals held prisoner in Azerbaijan, including businessman Ruben Vardanyan, former minister of state in the Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh (or Artsakh, IO, 18/06/24).

Embassies targeted

France's diplomatic representation in Azerbaijan is taken to task in these articles, which stress that "the embassy shows its inability to defend Anass Derraz, whose appeals do not stop". This is not the first time that French diplomacy has been directly targeted by such campaigns. Olivier Decottignies, French ambassador to Armenia since summer 2023, has been the subject of defamatory allegations on social media, which have mobilised the French foreign ministry's Direction de la Communication et de la Presse (DCP) (IO, 01/04/24). When contacted, the DCP did not answer questions about Baku's latest information campaign.

While Russia, Turkey and China are among the main players being monitored for information manipulation, French intelligence services did not expect Azerbaijan also to get involved (IO, 21/06/24). Such information offensives have been mounted one after the other since 2023, against a backdrop of a sharp deterioration in bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and France, which supported Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

When contacted, the French ambassador to Azerbaijan, Anne Boillon, declined to comment. Azerbaijan's ambassador to France, Leyla Abdullayeva, did not respond to our requests.

Anti-colonialism, another trump card

Playing the anti-colonialism card, the NGO Baku Initiative Group (BIG) has stepped up its criticism of what it describes as "France's illegal occupation of the island of Mayotte" in the Indian Ocean, which was the theme of a conference held in Baku on 3 September. The BIG has also repeatedly criticised the "occupation" and "violence" carried out by French security forces in Martinique and New Caledonia. Baku already expressed its support for independence movements in New Caledonia earlier this year. The BIG, set up in the summer of 2023, has itself forged links with pro-independence movements there, including the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS).

While the BIG has also slammed the Dutch government's alleged colonial policies, the bulk of its accusations are directed at France. The home page of its website speaks for itself: it features a map with the regions considered to be colonised, namely New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and Corsica. There is also a map of the surface areas of those places relative to Azerbaijan.

BIG campaigns also extend to Africa. The NGO hosted another conference on 3 October, this time on the subject of French neo-colonialism on the continent.

Alice Pontallier, Franck Renaud
© Copyright Intelligence Online. Reproduction and dissemination prohibited (Intranet...) without written permission. -