A scathing report by French authorities investigators accuses Pierre-Olivier Costa, the just lately suspended president of Marseille’s Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM), of sexual and ethical harassment, breaching guidelines for granting public contracts, and placing the southern French metropolis’s solely nationwide museum “in danger,” in keeping with a Le Monde investigation.
A front-page scoop revealed Friday night in France additionally reveals that Marseille’s public prosecutor has expanded an ongoing prison investigation into Costa’s time as president of Marseille’s prime museum, notably amid allegations that he unlawfully used preferential therapy to award contracts and rent on the public establishment. The museum’s managing director, Véronique Haché, can also be named within the report for associated, alleged misconduct.
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The much-anticipated investigation “identifies quite a few breaches by the administration — the president and the managing director — of their moral obligations, together with remarks of a sexual, sexist, or degrading nature, inappropriate habits by the president, intrusions into personal life, suspicions of favoritism in hiring and wage insurance policies, and disloyalty to the supervising authority [the Ministry of Culture],” states the report by the government-operated l’inspection générale des affaires culturelles (IGAC) [General Inspectorate of Cultural Affairs]. “Past the sense of misery, it’s the establishment itself that’s now in danger,” it added.
In late June, Costa and Haché have been each suspended from their roles for a interval of 4 months, following the IGAC’s then-undisclosed report into allegations of office and sexual harassment. That information shocked many who knew Costa was near France’s first girl, Brigitte Macron, for whom he served as chief of employees earlier than taking the Mucem management position in 2022. Costa can also be a former advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron.
Nonetheless, earlier indicators of issues included a employees protest in June 2024 and an open letter signed by 79 Mucem staffers decrying a poisonous office, together with “rising stress and threats.”
The IGAC report states that along with one former Mucem employee who filed a proper grievance for sexual and ethical harassment by Costa, authorities auditors found a second, allegedly related case throughout their investigation.
Based on the IGAC, the primary unnamed former museum employee stated Costa repeatedly made specific propositions to him on the night of August 8, 2025. Different staff stated they witnessed Costa’s “inappropriate habits” towards the identical employee. The second, former Mucem worker, stated they skilled one thing related, stating: Costa “made sexual propositions to me, like oral intercourse, it occurred a thousand instances … I pushed him away by making jokes about it.”
Costa has denied all wrongdoing. “I don’t converse to folks in that method,” he informed authorities investigators. In April, he additionally informed Le Monde he had “full confidence” within the ongoing judicial investigation by Marseille’s judicial system. “I need transparency and for every part to be delivered to gentle … These are extraordinarily severe accusations, and I dispute them.”
Lastly, in keeping with the report, Costa breached honest competitors laws by granting a number of contracts to people and/or corporations whereas additionally spending properly past budgeted limits on not less than two events. These embody, however should not restricted to, contracts granted at inflated prices to Bastien Baudoin, the pinnacle of the consultancy agency Tyrex Conseil, and the corporate Ludoparc, for the constructing of a kids’s playground. These symbolize “dangers of battle of curiosity or prison offenses,” in keeping with the IGAC report.
Of their rationalization, the report describes “a president thought to be untouchable as he’s incompetent, and an interior circle that’s likewise not very competent and failing in its position as a safeguard.”
Lastly, IGAC investigators beneficial launching disciplinary proceedings in opposition to Costa and the final supervisor, Haché.
