LETTER FROM CASABLANCA
It all started with a photograph published online, on Saturday, May 25, in the Australian version of the British tabloid, Daily Mail. The anonymous shot shows two people kissing in a park in the 4th arrondissement of Paris.
One is a business celebrity, Andrew Forrest, founder of the Fortescue Metals mining group and Australia's second-richest person, according to US magazine Forbes. The other is a "mysterious woman," whose identity was not revealed by the newspaper. It was a rival publication, The Australian, owned by News Corp, which, on Monday, May 27, provided the supposed name of the unknown woman: Leila Benali, Morocco's minister of energy transition and sustainable development.
While Forrest's features can indeed be discerned, the photograph does not formally identify his partner, who has her back to the camera. But, in support of its argument, The Australian reported that the snapshot dates from a few days earlier when, according to the newspaper, Benali and Forrest were both in Paris.
On May 13, the businessman met the French minister for ecological transition, Christophe Béchu, at the Choose France summit, while the Moroccan minister was on an official visit to the French capital from May 15 to 16. According to the newspaper, the near-concurrence of these dates leaves no room for doubt.
Forrest, who is officially separated from the mother of his children but not divorced, has not commented, and his entourage has not confirmed that the woman in question was indeed Benali. But another News Corp publication, The Daily Telegraph, quoted a source close to the businessman on Wednesday, May 29, as saying that he has been seeing the minister "for months."
The affair might have remained confined to the usual comments about the private lives of two consenting personalities, were it not for the fact that Fortescue last month announced its intentions to join forces with the OCP Group, a Moroccan fertilizer giant. The deal is to be sealed by a joint venture and is intended to "supply green hydrogen, green ammonia, and green fertilizers to Morocco, Europe, and international markets."
That is all it took for the Moroccan press to pick up on the alleged connection, seeing it as a potential conflict of interest. Not only does the energy minister sit on the OCP Group's board of directors, but she also plays a key role in Morocco's green hydrogen strategy, a highly strategic sector for which the Sherifian kingdom, which has declared its intention to earmark 1 million hectares of land, has great ambitions.
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