Xavier Azalbert is a 56-year-old entrepreneur, mathematician and economist by training. He cut his teeth at McKinsey, a large consulting firm. Then created or took over companies in online banking, construction, soil remediation.
In 2014, he took control of France evening after a muscular standoff against his partner. France Eveningis the name of a former major daily created in 1944, resulting from the resistance. The newspaper sold a million copies. The director was called Pierre Lazareff, with star reporter Joseph Kessel.
Tribunes of “enlightened citizens”
More France Evening then experienced a long descent into hell, passing from hand to hand with including two Russian billionaires who sank it.
From 400 journalists at the time, there are only four left when Xavier Azalbert redeems the title. But it is still four too many, they will be dismissed a little later.
It is therefore a newspaper without a journalist that the entrepreneur has been running ever since. An online journal that publishes op-eds of what Azalbert calls “enlightened citizens”.
And for a year now, the coronavirus has become the main subject. France evening defends Professor Raoult, defends treatments that have not been proven, defends the idea that the seriousness of the pandemic is greatly exaggerated.
Xavier Azalbert questions Silvano Trotta, a YouTuber-entrepreneur who thinks the virus was created by Bill Gates, and who also claims that the Moon is hollow.
Call for sedition
Sites specializing in conspiracy have classified France Evening among the 10 biggest French-speaking peddlers. And it works, France evening claims to have 3 million unique visitors per month and earn money.
Only Friday, a milestone was crossed. The site published an appeal to the people of France signed by singer Francis Lalanne. In this long text, still on the front page of the site this morning, the singer affirms that the motherland is in danger, that confinement is a tyranny and he calls on the highest dignitaries of the French army to dismiss, arrest and judge Emmanuel Macron .
In law, this is called a call for sedition, or a military uprising, an offense punishable by 5 years in prison. For the author of the text, and for the director of the publication, Xavier Azalbert, the “enlightened” entrepreneur risks discovering what editorial responsibility is.
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