Former MEP Rachida Dati’s 2014 emails derided corruption allegations, which now form core of French trial

Rachida Dati as an MEP in early 2018 (Source: © European Union 2018 – Source : EP)

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By Nikolaj Nielsen,
Brussels
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Former French MEP Rachida Dati is facing intense scrutiny following allegations she took lobbying money from French energy giant GDF Suez/Engie during her time at the European Parliament, on top of a separate investigation into her ties with French car maker Nissan-Renault.

The 60-year-old, who was born to Arab parents and started out as a maid, is also a former French culture and justice minister, and now mayor of the affluent 7th arrondissement of Paris.

But she is now wearing a police ankle-bracelet and faces four years in prison in an ongoing investigation into her ties with GDF Suez, which first became public in December 2025.

And back in 2014, when she sat in the EU Parliament on the benches of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) group, she threatened to sue EUobserver when we asked her about the energy firm, which later changed its name to Engie, while deriding the corruption allegations as racist attacks.

EUobserver has published below some of the related email correspondence for the sake of transparency:

“Rachida Dati will not hesitate to sue any media which will report such a defamatory statement,” her office also said in an email in 2015, after a German Green MEP, who was spearheading an ethics committee, said she was likely pocketing GDF Suez money.

The "defamatory statement" had been made by Gerald Häfner, a former German Green MEP, who had chaired the parliament’s advisory committee on the Code of Conduct. Häfner's supposedly offensive statement was:

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Rachida Dati as an MEP in early 2018 (Source: © European Union 2018 - Source : EP)

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Author Bio

Nikolaj Nielsen joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.

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