French Publisher Won’t Print Book on Moroccan King After Authors’ Arrest
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — A major French publishing house has decided not to publish a book critical of King Mohammed VI of Morocco after its two authors were arrested last week in Paris and charged with blackmail and extortion on accusations they demanded 2 million euros, or about $2.3 million, to keep the book unpublished. The latest developments in the affair have been likened by the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, to a “bad movie.” The scandal, which raised questions of journalistic ethics here, has nonetheless erupted less than a year after relations between Morocco and France were mended following a long diplomatic row. Lawyers on both sides are now fighting a media battle to paint the authors either as devious journalists interested only in leveraging their work to make money or as respected but fallible professionals who fell into a financially tempting trap laid before them by the Moroccan leadership. The Éditions du Seuil publishing house said in a statement on Monday that its “relationship of trust” with the authors, Catherine Graciet and Eric Laurent, had been “dissolved” and that publication of their book, initially planned for early 2016, could not go ahead. Mr. Laurent has said that he will try to publish the book elsewhere. The two authors were arrested last week during a police sting operation after a meeting with a representative from the Moroccan royalty in a luxury hotel in Paris. The Moroccan authorities had filed a complaint of blackmail after a first meeting between Mr. Laurent and the royal representative, which led to the opening of a formal investigation in Paris. The Journal du Dimanche newspaper, which said it had obtained audio recordings made by the representative at the meetings and a document signed by the two journalists, reported on Sunday that Mr. Laurent and Ms. Graciet had agreed to never write about Morocco again in exchange for 2 million euros. They left the hotel with a cash advance of 40,000 euros, or about $45,000, each, the newspaper reported. The police, who were monitoring the meeting, then swooped in to arrest them. Lawyers for Mr. Laurent and Ms. Graciet confirmed in telephone interviews that their clients had signed the document and received the cash advance, but said that the Journal du Dimanche had published truncated and misleading excerpts from the audio recordings made during the meetings. Both lawyers questioned the legal grounds of the sting operation and said they would try to have the case thrown out. Mr. Laurent and Ms. Graciet are currently free under court supervision and have been barred from speaking with each other. Neither has denied that they accepted a financial transaction. But both assert that it was Mohammed VI’s representative, not them, who first made the offer to pay to keep the book under wraps, rejecting accusations that they were attempting to blackmail the king and describing the deal instead as a “trap” that they fell into. Mr. Laurent, in a phone interview from his lawyer’s office, said that the idea of paying not to publish had first been put forward by the Moroccan representative, a lawyer named Hicham Naciri, whom he first met in Paris on Aug. 11. The meeting, the first of three, was set up after Mr. Laurent called the king’s office in late July for comment on the two journalists’ reporting. Mr. Laurent said he ended up accepting the deal, mainly for personal reasons — his wife has cancer, he said. “I was tempted,” Mr. Laurent said. “Do I regret it? Yes, probably. But I’ve been doing this job for over 35 years, I don’t have anything to hide, and I work on the assumption that what was offered to us was a private transaction related to my work.” “I took risks to investigate, to discover a certain number of things, to acquire a certain number of documents,” Mr. Laurent added. “After that, it’s my right to publish a book or not to publish a book.” Ms. Graciet trod a similarly fine line between journalistic integrity and criminal liability in her defense, acknowledging that the deal was ethically wrong but arguing that it was a private transaction consented to by both parties, and that it broke no laws. She told Le Parisien, a newspaper, that Mr. Laurent had told her about the Moroccan representative’s offer but that she was incredulous about it, and agreed to attend the last meeting at Mr. Naciri’s insistence to learn more — only to be tempted by the offer as well. “I had a moment of weakness,” she said. “It’s human, no? Everyone wonders what one could do with their life with 2 million euros. Try to imagine the situation. And it was to forgo publication of a book, not to kill someone.” Still, the news that Ms. Graciet and Mr. Laurent had consented to pull their book project in exchange for money was all the more shocking in France and Morocco because they had established a reputation in both countries as fierce critics of the Moroccan leadership. In 2012 they published a book that depicted Mohammed VI as a “predator king” who had carved up Morocco’s economy to increase his personal wealth. Ms. Graciet also wrote a book with Nicolas Beau in 2009 that criticized Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the former Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and in 1993 Mr. Laurent had published a more positive book made up of interviews with Hassan II, Mohammed VI’s father and predecessor. Eric Dupond-Moretti, the Moroccan king’s lawyer in France, speaking to the i-Télé news channel on Monday, said that Mr. Laurent was the “first to mention money” and maintained accusations that the journalists had blackmailed the Moroccan king by suggesting that the book would contain information that might destabilize the monarchy. Without offering specifics, Mr. Laurent did not deny that he and Ms. Graciet were working on information that was compromising for the king, saying that the book had the potential to “rattle” the monarchy. He said Mr. Naciri insisted that they reveal the sources of their reporting for the book, which they refused to do. France and Morocco recently resumed judicial cooperation after an extended diplomatic spat, but Mr. Fabius, the foreign minister, brushed aside any suggestions that their relationship might sour once more over the affair. “It’s a bad movie,” Mr. Fabius said on French radio and television on Sunday. “It doesn’t shake up relations between our two countries.” |