Brigitte Macron files VIP fraud claim

By Our Foreign Staff AIDES to Brigitte Macron have filed a legal complaint for identity fraud after opportunistic tricksters sent emails in her name seeking VIP treatment, her office has said.

The emails sought favours for people supposedly close to France’s first lady – free pickup from an airport in Morocco for someone posing as her nephew, for example, or the best table at a haute cuisine restaurant in Paris.

The scammer or scammers used the email address cabinet@ presidence.fr, pretending to be someone from her office.

Presidence.fr is the website of the Présidence art gallery in Paris, which has no connection with the official website of President Emmanuel Macron, Elysee.fr.

“An investigation is under way,” Mrs Macron’s office said after the complaint was filed in Paris. A source close to the first lady told RTL the emails were “a very clear attempt to damage her reputation”.