"Holding Lemahieu": how our journalist's name ended up at the head of Pierre-Édouard Stérin's empire

It's a capitalist movement that has so far remained under the radar, but which strongly resembles an attempt at intimidation, unprecedented to our knowledge in the history of the press. A little over a year after L'Humanité revealed, on July 19, 2024, the Périclès project, the plan of the tax exile billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin to bring the extreme right to power, we discovered that the person concerned had chosen to create, this summer, at the top of his pyramid of companies, a new "head holding company", with a capital of 1.395 billion euros, a sum coming from the shares of his historic holding company in Belgium, called BAD 21.

So far, nothing surprising, except that the ultraconservative entrepreneur has decided to give this new structure a much more surprising name: Lemahieu Holding, appropriating the name of our colleague Thomas Lemahieu, who has published numerous revelations about his aims in these columns.

Deliberate provocation? A thinly veiled threat? A mere coincidence? This last hypothesis, at least, was ruled out when Pierre-Édouard Stérin took the initiative, on August 28, to write an email to our colleague to inform him of his approach – or rather, to revel in it.

Promising a "scoop" in the subject line – which wasn't one, as this new holding company was spotted immediately after its creation – the billionaire removed all ambiguity: "Dear Sir, I was very touched by the great attention you have paid to my activities over the past few years. I am certain that you will appreciate in return the name I have given to my holding company," he said ironically, accompanying his letter with a document demonstrating Lemahieu Holding's affiliation with the Belgian Interprofessional Employers' Federation.

Such an initiative might be laughable if it did not come from the "patron saint of the French far right", to borrow the title of the series that L'Humanité has been dedicating to the character since January 2024. The founder of the Smartbox sets has set himself the goal of "becoming a saint", but also now of "saving France" by defending "key values" ( "individual freedom" , "rootedness" , "family" , "Christianity" , etc.) and by fighting against these "trends" which undermine the greatness of the country ( "socialism" , "wokism" , "Islamism" , "immigration" ). This is also summed up by the acronym Pericles, a contraction of "Patriots, Rooted, Resistant, Identitarian, Christian, Liberal, European, Sovereignist".

Although the businessman confided in the Journal du Dimanche in March that he "defends ideas openly, without a hidden agenda," he does not seem to have appreciated the numerous articles in L'Humanité that revealed his plans. As early as April 2024, on the LinkedIn network, he defended himself, for example, from working for the far right: "I speak to all political and economic decision-makers, across the entire political spectrum, without affiliation with any particular party, despite what some, particularly on the far left (L'Humanité), like to invent."

Questioned before the revelation in our columns of the Pericles plan, Pierre-Édouard Stérin had indicated to us, through his communications consultant, that he was considering "prosecution" for "disclosure of business secrets" if the document were published.

Since then, through confidences granted to various right-wing media, the billionaire has not missed an opportunity to attack L'Humanité . In an interview with Le Point in November 2024, he denied any desire to put Pericles at the service of a political movement or party, believing, without citing our newspaper, that this idea was only a "caricature on the part of a radical far-left press affiliated with LFI"...

Before paying "homage" in his own way to the investigative work of L'Humanité : "An amusing fact, " he explained to the JDD in March, "is that 100% of the articles critical of me are based on elements published in the newspaper L'Humanité - but no journalist, not even in the public service, takes the time to specify that their source is a communist newspaper, directed by a communist elected official."

"Communist" is probably the worst insult for someone who has set himself up as the chief financial officer of a form of reactionary ideological counter-revolution. In a profile of him by journalist Eugénie Bastié, published in April in Le Figaro, Arnaud Rérolle, Pierre-Édouard Stérin's right-hand man and general director of Périclès , analyzed our newspaper's interest in his boss: "Pierre-Édouard has made the front page of L'Humanité three times in the space of twelve months. He has beaten Stalin's record! That a newspaper claiming to uphold an ideology responsible for 100 million deaths in the 20th ^century considers Pierre-Édouard an enemy is rather a source of glory."

Contacted to find out how he interpreted the name given to the new holding company of the group headed by his employer, Arnaud Rérolle did not respond to our questions, nor did François Durvye, the president of Otium Capital, the billionaire's investment fund, who is also a close advisor to Marine Le Pen. Pierre-Édouard Stérin, also asked to explain the meaning of his approach, did not respond.

"We will not accept that our journalists are threatened because they are doing their job and we give our full support to Thomas Lemahieu in the face of what we consider to be an unacceptable provocation, even an attempt at intimidation," reacted the director of L'Humanité , Fabien Gay. Without prejudging any possible legal action that could be taken in this case, it goes without saying that the editorial staff of L'Humanité will continue to inform its readers about the worrying plans of Pierre-Édouard Stérin.