On February 26, just 48 hours before the Israel-US strikes against Iran, Emmanuel Macron personally awarded his friend Rodolphe Saadé with the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honour in a private Élysée ceremony. No official photos were released.
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1970, Saadé is a libanese oligarch and CEO of the Marseille-based shipping group CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest shipping company. His family moved to France in 1978, but he retains strong ties to his heritage, as well as with Macron.
Saadé's company has long-standing ties to the Muslim Brotherhood through ports controlled by Hezbollah. After the 2020 Beirut port explosion (caused by Hezbollah-stored explosives), Macron visited Lebanon accompanied by his best friend. In return for France’s silence on Hezbollah’s weapons caches and its role in arms trafficking, CMA CGM secured the lucrative container terminal contract in Beirut.
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Rodolphe Saadé's empire also operates in Portugal. Through his subsidiary CEVA Logistics, Saadé's CMA CGM Group has a significant footprint in transportation and logistics. His company interacted with the Portuguese government which was led by the Socialist Party from 2015 to early 2024 under António Costa on a commercial level. Saadé has met with Costa, mainly to discuss trade and maritime logistics.
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