The Paris consigliere: Head of French company supplying arms to Ukraine flies to Moscow and manages the Kremlin’s slush fund

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Henri Proglio and corruption allegations

Born in 1949, Henri Édouard Proglio is a prominent member of the French political and business elite. From 2009 to 2014, he served as the head of the French energy giant Électricité de France (EDF). Even then, Proglio’s work often drew media attention due to his controversial business ties with Russian state entities. He became the subject of several investigations but managed to retain prominent positions in French business circles nonetheless.

On Sept. 14, 2023, as part of an investigation launched by the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office, police searched Proglio’s home and office, which was still located in a building owned by EDF. The former executive was accused of corruption and the unlawful use of corporate assets, with charges centering on contracts that had been awarded without competitive bidding in the areas of communications consulting, strategic advice, risk management, and lobbying.

The suspicions were heightened by the discovery of €300,000 in cash in Proglio’s safe deposit box. Prosecutors sought a two-year suspended sentence and a €200,000 fine. However, in the end, both Proglio and EDF were acquitted of all charges.

A friend of the Kremlin

While still serving as head of EDF, Proglio began showing a strong interest in joint projects with Russia. In 2010, during then–President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to France, Russian electricity operator OJSC Holding MRSK (now Rosseti) signed a cooperation agreement with EDF. The following summer, at the 15th annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the heads of both companies signed a strategic partnership agreement in the presence of Medvedev and French Minister for Foreign Trade Pierre Lellouche. EDF’s Russian subsidiary, ERDF Vostok LLC, took over management of the Tomsk Distribution Company (OJSC TRK). Although the agreement was terminated by the Russian side in 2014, the subsidiary itself was not officially dissolved until October 2022.

The 2010 project was merely the first in a broader series of Proglio’s initiatives aimed at integrating Russian state monopolies with the French energy sector. In 2011, at the Sochi International Investment Forum, EDF signed an agreement to acquire a 15% stake in the offshore section of the South Stream gas pipeline — with prime minister Vladimir Putin on hand for the ceremony. At the 2012 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Proglio and Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller signed a cooperation agreement on gas-based power generation in Europe. The companies planned to jointly build and acquire new and existing gas power plants on a 50/50 basis, with Gazprom set to be the exclusive supplier of fuel for these facilities.

But Proglio’s longest-standing collaboration was with Russia’s nuclear sector, which began with an agreement signed between EDF and Rosatom in 2010. Around that time, the head of the French company joined the board of directors for Rosatom’s international projects. He justified his involvement in the Russian state monopoly by pointing out that Rosatom was the main customer for Arabelle turbines, which are used in Russian nuclear power plants.

In 2014, Proglio stepped down as CEO of EDF and became chairman of the board at the defense conglomerate Thales, a partially state-owned entity that remains one of France’s most important defense manufacturers. However, Proglio’s ties to Russia soon proved problematic. Emmanuel Macron, who was serving as Minister of the Economy in 2015, pushed for the head of the defense corporation to sever his connections with Russia. However, Macron’s efforts to resolve the conflict of interest had an unexpected outcome: Proglio chose Russia over France, stepping down as chairman of Thales in May 2015.

Nevertheless, Proglio maintained his ties to another major defense manufacturer, Dassault Aviation.

The Kremlin’s slush fund manager

Not even the events of Feb. 24, 2022, deterred Proglio from doing business in Russia, nor from cooperating with the country’s elite. As The Insider discovered, Henri Édouard Proglio — listed in Russian registries as “Проглио” — owns three companies in Russia: Henri Proglio Consulting LLC, AP Energy Advisory LLC, and Mezhproject LLC. Proglio himself manages all three firms, and the companies’ beneficiaries are either Proglio personally or members of his family.

These firms provide consulting services and generated more than 633 million rubles ($8 million) in revenue over the first three years of the full-scale war. Most of the reported revenue is categorized as “other proceeds,” with no further details provided. There is reason to believe that a significant portion of the companies’ turnover goes toward compensating Proglio himself. For instance, in 2024, AP Energy Advisory LLC reported 46.1 million rubles ($587,000) in revenue, of which 45.2 million ($575,000) was used to cover administrative expenses.

In addition to running his own businesses, since at least November 2013 Henri Proglio has served as a member of the board of directors of ABR Management. This joint-stock company was established in 2011 with the participation of close Putin associates Yury Kovalchuk and Nikolai Shamalov — two nominal holders of the Russian dictator’s personal assets. ABR Management, whose assets are registered under the names of Bank Rossiya, the insurance company SOGAZ, and the National Media Group (NMG), is widely understood to serve as a “Kremlin slush fund.”

Aside from Proglio, ABR Management’s board of directors consists of two other individuals: Kirill Kovalchuk and Mikhail Klishin. The company has been under U.S. blocking sanctions since 2016. Both Kovalchuk and Bank Rossiya CEO Klishin have been under U.S. sanctions since 2016 and were added to EU, UK, and Canadian sanctions lists in 2022. None of this, however, has stopped the French executive from working with them — nor from earning significant sums in the process. “Expenses for remuneration of the company’s management bodies” for 2022–2024 amounted to 110.7 million rubles ($1.4 million).

The French executive has also continued his cooperation with Rosatom. Since the 2010s, Proglio has served on the board of directors of Akkuyu Nuclear Anonim Şirketi. The company, wholly owned by Rosatom and its subsidiaries, is in the process of constructing Turkey’s first nuclear power plant.

Flight records show that Proglio is still a frequent visitor to Russia. On the day of the full-scale invasion, he was in the country, flying back to France on Feb. 25, 2022. Since then, he has continued to travel to Moscow every few months — with the most recent trip coming this past June.

Dassault Aviation and a conflict of interest

Proglio combines his role at the Kovalchuk-linked fund with a leadership position at a major French defense manufacturer — the aerospace company Dassault Aviation, where he has held a senior position since Apr. 23, 2008. According to the company’s 2024 annual report, Henri Édouard Proglio remains an independent director and also chairs the Audit Committee. The report explicitly states that the individual responsible for auditing a defense contractor for the French Republic is simultaneously involved in the construction of a Russian nuclear power plant in Turkey and the management of assets belonging to the Putin-affiliated Kovalchuk brothers.

Dassault Aviation is a major French aerospace company that manufactures both military and civilian aircraft. Its products include the fourth-generation multirole fighter jets Rafale and Mirage 2000, the Neuron combat drone demonstrator, the sixth-generation fighter jet project known as the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), and Falcon business jets. According to the company’s reports, more than 1,000 Dassault-made combat aircraft are currently in service worldwide.

Even more significant in the context of European security is the fact that Dassault Aviation holds a 27% stake in the defense giant Thales. It was through this stake — and the influence of Dassault Group owner Serge Dassault — that Proglio secured his short-lived management position at Thales.

In October 2014, the French newspaper Libération listed Henri Proglio and Serge Dassault as being among five French businessmen who met with Sergey Naryshkin — then the Speaker of the Russian Duma, and today the head of the country’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The report was published at a time when Naryshkin was already under international sanctions. (The article has since been removed, but a copy remains archived on the Wayback Machine.)

But regardless of whether Proglio met with Naryshkin way back in the early months of Russia’s “covert” invasion of Ukraine, the French executive’s present-day business ties represent a profound conflict of interest. France is supplying Ukraine with weapons to resist Russian aggression — including arms produced by both Dassault Aviation and Thales. These include Mirage 2000 fighter jets, SAMP/T air defense systems, and FZ275 LGR laser-guided rockets used to counter drones. At the same time, the audit and oversight responsibilities of these defense firms involve a business associate Yury Kovalchuk, one of the chief ideologues of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.