The former director of the Institute of IPSOS surveys, which concluded a consulting contract in 2008 with the Elysée on behalf of the company he had just launched, Giacometti Péron, tried to justify his role. .
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By contrast with his counterpart Patrick Buisson, who preceded him Monday, October 25 at the bar of 32 e Correctional Chamber of Paris, Pierre Giacometti would appear almost erased. Tuesday, the one who was the other “external” adviser of President Sarkozy, warned as a conceiveism – as well as his company, Giacometti Péron (renamed since 2016 “No com”) -, has done everything to distinguish methods of his sulphurous former colleague and claim, unlike him, a “neutral role” of decision support.
White Hair and Dark Costume, Mr. Giacometti clarifies his long-term relationship with Mr. Sarkozy as a senior executive and then Director General, from 2000 to 2008, from the IPSOS Survey Institute. In 2002, Ipsos won a call for tenders from the Ministry of the Interior, at the head of which Nicolas Sarkozy is. The two men twist over the years a “relationship of trust”.
By the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy against Ségolène Royal in 2007, Pierre Giacometti strives to write not one, but two proposals to the future head of state. On the one hand, that of the Institute he leads, Ipsos, who proposes to the Elysee a provision of regular surveys – without tender procedure, as it is the “custom” of the Elysée.
on the other, Mr. Giacometti deprived a three-page letter, in which he proposed to Mr. Sarkozy – who invited him to join his office – to work with the new company ‘uses to climb with his associate Alain Péron. “We will avoid any risk of controversy on the consequences of my appointment, which would not fail to fuel the suspicions on the relationship between the boss of a survey company (…) and the candidate for the presidential election”, writes Mr. Giacometti.
“There could not be a call for tenders”
“I changed my business”, he justifies, refuting the expression of “dual cap” launched by the financial prosecution. “You had two goals, a staff, as part of a business creation, and always aimed at preserving Ipsos’s interests?”, Summarizes President Benjamin Blanchet. Mr. Giacometti acquiesces. IPSOS – also notified in this trial for 1.5 million euros of surveys ordered without calls for tenders – will be one of the main beneficiaries of the operating studies orders that will do the Elysee.
The agreement between Giacometti Péron and the Elysee is immediate, but will make a few months to formalize by a contract – without call for tenders – which provides 55 000 euros excluding tax of monthly lump-sum benefits, a number revised to the end of the term of office. “I was convinced that the specificity of my advice was that there could not be a call for tenders,” says the former sonar, which assures asking the question to Claude Guéant, Secretary General of the Elysee, the following year, in 2009, and obtained from his part the assurance that the public procurement code did not have to apply to his case.
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