Marine Le Pen’s most faithful lieutenants arrived early at the stately baroque Val-de-Grâce church in the fifth arrondissement in the heart of Paris.
It was a freezing day and a crowd had gathered outside to pay homage to her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of her far-right National Rally party, who died days earlier on Jan. 7.
Many of the mourners fit a familiar mold: party veterans, family members and long-term friends and loyalists, some of them decked out in paratroopers’ red berets and clasping tricolors.
But one conspicuously tall figure inside the church seemed cut from a different cloth. François Durvye stood in the second row, just by the church’s central aisle, only a few steps from the party’s top brass. A discreet financier with no official role in the party, he was in attendance as both a member of Marine Le Pen’s inner circle and one of her most trusted advisers.
Durvye’s day job isn’t political, or at least not on paper. He runs Otium Capital, the investment fund of one of France’s richest men: Pierre-Édouard Stérin.
Until recently, Stérin was relatively unknown, but there is now an increasing awareness of his importance as a force in the country’s swing to the right — one that could even deliver the presidency to the National Rally in 2027.
A tech entrepreneur and Belgium-based tax exile, Stérin reluctantly stepped into the limelight after eye-popping reports last July about his latest investment: a secret, wide-ranging project aimed at boosting right-wing forces to fight “woke insanity imported from American universities” and to form a political elite to restore “France’s grandeur.”
A self-made man and a devout Catholic, he describes his ideology as “liberal conservatism” — a mix of economic libertarianism and social conservatism — and has pledged up to €150 million to support a myriad of projects.
His manifesto includes supporting traditionalist lawyers to craft a “judicial response” against cancel culture, and boosting the prospects of right-wing candidates in mayoral elections next year.
Stérin’s political scheme, dubbed Périclès and initially kept closely under wraps, only came to light after the newspaper L’Humanité reported on it, publishing internal documents outlining its core targets: to “serve and save France” by fighting “the country’s main ills (socialism, wokism, Islamism, immigration).” The documents promoted the idea of a field trip to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary “for inspiration” and proposed offering “operational consultancy” to help the National Rally win 300 big urban targets, where it has conventionally struggled in regional elections.
Asked about that consultancy for the National Rally, Périclès’ Director General Arnaud Rérolle said the idea was explored but did not ultimately materialize.
Strict Catholic, party agnostic
Stérin himself, who declined to be interviewed for this story but answered several written questions from POLITICO, denies supporting Le Pen specifically. Indeed, the document on his political agenda stresses that any support for her party is “neither exclusive nor taking precedence over [support to] other parties.”
“Immigration aside, I have few beliefs in common with the National Rally,” he said in an interview to French magazine Le Point. “It is absurd to suspect me of maneuvering to bring the National Rally to power. That being said, in all honesty, between the National Rally and the left, or the far left, my vote is easily decided.”
“I don’t support one candidate or another,” he wrote to POLITICO. “I have, however, a great deal of admiration for all those who devote their lives to politics — it is a noble thing that demands a great deal of personal sacrifice, and requires talents that I don’t have.”
Amid France’s political chaos, the far right is moving closer to power than ever. Stérin and his trusted associates seem acutely aware of that fact, vowing in Périclès’ internal documents to aim for “the successful exercise of power at the earliest opportunity.”
For his part, Durvye insists his day job and his political activities are separate.
“I have a side gig that is no secret, which is that I have been advising Marine Le Pen and [National Rally President] Jordan Bardella quite closely since 2021, so before I started at Otium,” he said. “I am not Pierre-Édouard’s pawn with Marine Le Pen because I didn’t start working for him until afterward” — although the relationship between the two men predated Durvye’s links with Le Pen.
While Stérin’s project and heavy investment in his country’s political class is reminiscent of tycoons who have propelled numerous American presidents to power, including Donald Trump, the relationship runs counter to France’s tradition of strict separation between money and politics, which includes stringent rules on campaign financing.
Controversially, Stérin on Tuesday turned down a request by French lawmakers to testify in front of a parliamentary committee about election operations, after questions were raised about his project’s compatibility with campaign finance rules.
Stérin, with his very specific strand of Catholic conservatism, is also far from an obvious ideological ally for Marine Le Pen, a more mainstream populist, who is also a divorcée with more liberal views on abortion.
Despite this, a considerable chunk of Stérin’s money has gone straight from his pocket to Le Pen’s. In 2023, he coinvested €2.5 million, alongside Durvye, to buy Le Pen’s father’s family house in one of Paris’ richest suburbs — something he said he did at Durvye’s request.
Pragmatism over chemistry
Stérin first met Marine Le Pen over dinner in 2021, at Durvye’s home in Paris’ wealthy western suburbs.
Stérin, who made a fortune selling gift vouchers and later invested in a wide range of flourishing businesses spanning tech, hospitality and health, was looking for the right investment opportunity in a field he wasn’t very familiar with: politics. He needed someone with the personal charisma and drive to succeed where he couldn’t.
A self-described introvert, with little appetite for public life and a tendency for extreme rationalism — he famously ranks people he meets, his wife and mother of five children included, on a scale of 1 to 10 in a dedicated Excel sheet — Stérin had no political ambitions for himself, but wanted to throw his financial weight behind what he sees as an existential fight for his country.
The pair didn’t click.
At the time, Le Pen’s entourage was perceived as too weak by Stérin, lacking the kind of cerebral firepower with which he likes to surround himself: sharp executives living off mental excel sheets, able to summarize business opportunities (or key policy questions) in three bullet points and a handful of key statistics.
Both Stérin’s background and mindset as a successful venture capitalist could hardly be further from Le Pen’s. She is a political animal who thrives on instinct and flair, and rose to power championing antiestablishment views and protectionist policies in France’s disaffected industrial heartlands.
Among her party’s heavyweights, Stérin is far from commanding unanimous support. Equally, the billionaire himself recently lamented in Le Monde the National Rally’s “lack of proposals” on remigration, a far-right concept envisioning the expulsion of legal immigrants or their descendants. The idea is deemed too toxic by Le Pen’s party.
“Stérin is far right, we are nationalists. We have a protectionist vision, not a liberal one,” said a party official, who described Stérin as “an ultraconservative.” (Like others in this story, he was granted anonymity to speak freely.)
Although there was no immediate chemistry between Stérin and Le Pen, the dinner was still the start of a fruitful relationship between Durvye and the National Rally leader.
In just a couple of years, the financier, who graduated from the ´École Polytechnique, one of France’s elite universities, made his way into Le Pen’s closest circle, advising her on economic matters. He is working closely on her presidential platform as she prepares to run again for the country’s highest office in 2027.
Durvye quickly became part of Le Pen’s “Versailles connection,” named after the commune west of Paris, famed as the seat of Louis XIV’s court, where he went to school with the brother of Ambroise de Rancourt, Le Pen’s current chief of staff. The men have since become close friends. Versailles is also home to Renaud Labaye, another of Le Pen’s brainy lieutenants who is marshaling the National Rally’s troops in the National Assembly as secretary-general of her parliamentary group. He shares a strong Catholic faith with Durvye — although both prefer to keep it private.
Overlapping interests
Stérin is clear that he is a business angel for conservative champions and projects, and not a frontline political player himself.
The affable but faintly prickly entrepreneur — who goes as far as describing himself as “possibly on the spectrum” — lives far from the French political bubble in Belgium, where he operates his business through back to back 30-minute calls out of his local office.
While some praised Stérin’s transparency in recent interviews, others noted his openness was only an afterthought.
Indeed, the candor with which the billionaire laid out his intentions and battle plan in the Périclès documents led to some discomfort among the very people Stérin wanted to make an alliance with. “It is very strange to find one’s name in a project that one has never heard of,” said a leading lawmaker whose image was used on the documents without permission.
“In our relationship with the press in general, we kind of learned by doing,” Durvye said. “We understood that we had to talk to journalists … Because otherwise silence creates fantasy.”
Stérin’s reputation and growing influence among conservative circles was enough to draw curiosity from top politicians, including party officials who are not closely aligned with his politics.
National Rally Vice President Sébastien Chenu, who met him last year, said he was “expecting a caricature,” but found Stérin to be “respectful.”
“He says things I can like, and has on the other hand a violently liberal discourse which is not mine,” Chenu said.
While Stérin’s views on social issues such as abortion, which he strongly opposes, are at odds with a large swath of the National Rally’s electorate, his hawkish stance on fiscal issues and his drive for small government are more aligned with the party’s recent push toward traditional strongholds on the right, including business circles.
Conscious of the need to expand beyond its traditional base, the party has lately adopted a more pro-business stance, partly thanks to the rise of a more liberal, new generation in the party’s ranks.
A National Rally official involved in discussions around the party’s platform sought to downplay Stérin’s influence, likening him to a “Kentucky libertarian,” and way more liberal on economic matters than the party’s rank and file. But he acknowledged potential zones of convergence.
Stérin’s own political projects draw inspiration partly from U.S.-style libertarian and religious activism that has been instrumental in Trump’s reelection.
Last year, Rérolle, the Périclès boss, talked to members of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank largely credited for inspiring Trump’s 2024 presidential platform. “They are a source of inspiration, among others,” Rérolle said, adding that U.S. libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, a longtime Trump backer, was also among those he and his associates look up to.
Not unlike U.S. billionaires, Stérin is one of France’s most active philanthropists. After growing up in Normandy in a middle-class family, he built his fortune from the ground up and moved to Belgium upon the election in 2012 of Socialist President François Hollande, who promised tax hikes on the rich.
“I left France, with regret, to better serve my country,” he told Le Point, pledging to give away his saved taxes, alongside most of his fortune, to charitable causes he believes in and encouraging his five children to fend for themselves.
Winning ‘La France profonde’
Among Périclès’ most high-profile projects is a training academy for wannabe mayors ahead of the 2026 local elections, when the French will vote for regional officials in 35,000 communes.
City councils are a key target for the far right, as it is traditionally weaker in urban centers but has surged in more rural areas.
The academy, which has been granted hundreds of thousands euros of funding under the Périclès project, boasts 1,800 trainees, according to Rérolle. He insists most are politically unaffiliated.
While the academy itself pledges to operate independently from parties, its founder, Antoine Valentin, ran unsuccessfully with the National Rally’s support in the 2024 snap legislative election.
Valentin was part of a group of over 60 candidates running alongside Éric Ciotti, the former president of right-wing Les Républicains, who split from his party in a high-profile public feud last year to form an alliance with Le Pen.
Ciotti, who slammed the door on his party to create a new one just weeks ahead of June’s snap vote, had very little time to find candidates ready to run under his colors in a joint effort with Le Pen’s troops to beat French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance.
And that’s where Stérin’s influence can bear fruit.
Some 600 kilometers south of Paris, in the quiet village of Lalouvesc, locally known as a pilgrimage site and place of worship, Vincent Trébuchet, who was then working as head of philanthropy for Stérin’s charity organization but had been mulling a political career, sensed an opportunity.
“I asked to be put in touch with Ciotti’s teams,” Trébuchet said, leveraging the political connection of St´´´érin’s circles. (While he is friends with Stérin, he said he had no knowledge of his meta political project at the time.)
Trébuchet secured the backing of Ciotti’s conservatives in a matter of days. Local reporters, who had never heard of him, had to Google his name, one of them said.
The district where he ran, a rural area stretching from the Rhône valley to the heights of the Ardèche plateau, known for its deep valleys and wine and chestnut production, had been a Socialist stronghold for almost two decades.
It swung heavily right at the election, stunning even Trébuchet, who was elected after a blitz campaign focused on security, migration and rural issues.
“There is huge rural discontent,” he said, citing a barrage of new environmental regulations as a particular grievance.
In certain parts of the population, the anger is amplified by feelings of insecurity linked to societal change and economic decline. This is the lugubrious soundtrack playing in France’s cafés often referred to as “le c’était mieux avant,” a sense that things just used to be better.
While Stérin’s religious conservatism is a marginal factor for voters, there is much broader political capital in standing up for traditional values and against what’s seen as government overreach, said Jean-Yves Dormagen, a political scientist and founder of polling company Cluster17.
“The ‘liberal-conservative’ positioning puts its finger on something,” Dormagen said, referring to the growing number of far-right voters who used to vote for more traditional right parties. Beyond the blue-collar component of the National Rally vote, there is a growing contingent who are “conservative, pro-business and a bit libertarian … in the sense of anti-norms, and anti-politically correct.”
Ciotti’s troops in the National Assembly, while closely tied to Le Pen’s during the last presidential campaign, are pushing for a more economically liberal agenda likely to please Stérin.
Not entirely satisfied with far-right politicians, the billionaire recently met with Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, from Les Républicains. A hard-liner on migration and a social conservative who has been enjoying a steep rise in popularity, Retailleau is running for his party’s leadership, threatening to leave behind the right’s more moderate champions.
According to a report in Le Nouvel Obs, Stérin came straight to the point over a lunch with Retailleau in January.
“How can I help you ?” Stérin asked.
