When a medal becomes a favour: France’s honours system under scrutiny

France likes to present its honours as a republic’s cleanest form of distinction: solemn, state-sanctioned, above the grubby world of deals. That image now looks a little less polished. Police are investigating whether nominations for the Legion of Honour and the National Order of Merit were influenced by money, favours and access, with former Grand Chancellor Benoît Puga drawn into the inquiry.

Puga, one of France’s top generals, was questioned on September 22 and released the following evening, according to French media. He led the body responsible for the Legion of Honour from 2016 to 2023, and before that served as chief of staff to the president at the Élysée Palace under Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. The case is being handled by the anti-corruption office Office central de lutte contre la corruption et les infractions financières et fiscales, which is examining allegations of corruption, influence peddling and illegal conflict of interest.

At the centre of the investigation is the late Republican senator Jean-Pierre Bansard, who died in 2024. A Mediapart investigation had already raised suspicions that he used his fortune to secure honours for people around him. During his time in the Senate, three of his children and at least nine other associates received either the Legion of Honour or the National Order of Merit. According to the investigation, Bansard had a close relationship with Puga, who chaired the council vetting candidates for honours submitted by ministers. Final approval, as ever, rested with the president.

The allegations are not subtle. Mediapart said Bansard invited Puga to expensive dinners, hosted him on holiday at one of his properties in Corsica and offered business opportunities to Puga’s son. A judicial source told AFP that the inquiry seeks to determine whether, and under what conditions, Puga intervened between 2016 and 2023 to help people in Bansard’s family or professional circle receive decorations. Puga denies wrongdoing, as did Bansard before his death.

Searches have been carried out at both men’s homes, as well as at Bansard’s business and political offices. Police also questioned Puga’s wife, a restaurant owner, a former member of the Grand Chancellery and businessman Julien Renault, who founded the Foundation for the Legion of Honour in 2019. That foundation was meant to help business leaders finance renovation work at the Grand Chancellery, housed in a 19th-century mansion in central Paris. Mediapart has questioned whether it could also have served as a channel for influence. In July, Renault was named by Russian businessman Aleksandr Voinovskii as one of several powerful figures in France who, in 2021, allegedly proposed cash transfers of €50,000 to €150,000 in exchange for a decoration or a French residence permit. Renault denied ever promising honours.

The affair is awkward not because it involves a rare institution, but because it does not. More than 380,000 people have received the Legion of Honour since its creation, and around 79,000 still hold it. That scale is part of the point: a system built to reward merit depends on the belief that merit matters more than access. If that belief erodes, the medals remain, but the prestige does not. The president alone can revoke them, and the list of those stripped of honours includes Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, Harvey Weinstein and Nicolas Sarkozy. France has not abolished the old ritual of honour. It is merely discovering, once again, how expensive it can become when the ritual starts to look negotiable.

Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com