Bottled water scandal: The Élysée ‘knew at least since 2022 that Nestlé had been cheating for years’, says the rapporteur of the Senate investigatory commission. By Marie Dupin for Radio France.
After Alexis Kohler refused to answer their summons, the senators of the investigatory commission on the Nestlé Waters affair decided to publish all the exchanges between Nestlé and the Élysée Palace. These exchanges concerned the presence of viruses in Perrier water.
“We note today that Alexis Kohler, the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic, did not turn up for the summons we sent him. The Élysée is playing the empty chair. This is a serious decision. It sows the poison of doubt.” With these words, the socialist senator Alexandre Ouizille, rapporteur of the Senate investigatory commission, began his speech on Tuesday 8 April in the Salle Médicis, the usual venue for the hearings of the investigatory commission on the scandal of illegally processed and contaminated bottled water by the Nestlé group.
After speaking of an “affront to national representation” and a “refusal to get to the bottom of the truth before the French people”, Alexandre Ouizille announced his decision to make available to everyone, at the time of the publication of his report, the entirety of the exchanges between the Elysée Palace and the Swiss multinational: 74 pages of documents which “demonstrate the density of the exchanges between Nestlé and the Elysée”.
He cites a first meeting between the Secretary General of the Elysée Palace and Nestlé CEO Mark Schneider on 11 July 2002, during which the issue of “excessive use of filtration to correct the quality of Vittel, Contrex and Hépar water” was raised. Alexandre Ouizille believes that “the Élysée Palace knew that there was a problem with the quality of the water” at least from that date.
Why did they give so much space to Nestlé?
A series of meetings and email exchanges are listed up to December last year, although this commission, set up in November last year, had already begun its work. The President of the Republic “knew that Nestlé was cheating, that it was distorting competition with other mineral companies and that it was aware of the bacteriological contamination”.
In his speech, Alexandre Ouizille also recounts that “on 23 January 2024, Alexis Kohler was asked by Nicolas Bouvier, Nestlé’s water lobbyist, to meet Mark Schneider, Nestlé’s CEO, ‘as early as possible in the day’ “. Nestlé management was concerned about the investigation carried out by Radio France and Le Monde, which was finally published a few days later, on 30 January. The next day, “an email from Victor Blonde, still an advisor to the Élysée and Matignon, informed the Presidency, the Industry Cabinet and the Health Cabinet: ‘Even if the pressure (from the press investigation) is decreasing, here is a reformatted version of the EDL (elements of language) on the Nestlé Waters affair’.”
“Why didn’t you give the ministries simple instructions to comply with the law? Why did you give Nestlé so much space? Why this privileged position when the Élysée Palace has known for years that this group has been cheating?” are just some of the questions that Alexandre Ouizille would have liked to ask Alexis Kohler.
We want to go further
Another important question that the Senators would have liked to ask the Secretary General of the Elysée Palace was whether or not viruses had been detected in the water supplied by the Perrier Group. In an email dated 18 December 2024, Matthias Ginet, the Elysée Palace’s agricultural advisor, referred to Perrier’s “high presence of viruses that are not eliminated by filtration”.
Faced with the refusal of the Elysée secretary-general to appear before the committee, the rapporteur points out that “the Assembly and the chairman of the finance committee, Éric Coquerel, have decided to take the matter to court. We want to go further and do our part by bringing the matter before Parliament. We urgently need to strengthen the powers of parliamentary investigatory committees.”
