Dassault is a group which covers multiple company, the most notorious is "Dassault Aviation" which sells warplanes like the "Rafale". But it is also implicated in a lot of other activities like infrastructures and road work, press, informatics, etc. The company is very close to the government because it need public contracts to work, it can't sell planes without it being a contract between France and the country who buys it. Which is very problematic because Dassault has interest in influencing exterior politics of my country to sell it's planes. The head of Dassault company in the last few decades is Serge Dassault, Billionaire and French Politician. S. Dassault has used his influence and power as a media owner and elected regional politician to promote his business.

On the politic side he was a right wing politician, leaning to the far right. He made some homophobic statements during the discussion about same-sex marriage stating that homosexuality in ancient Greece was "one of the reasons for its decadence" and that "there is no renewing of the population. We're going to have a country of Homos. There will be nobody left in 10 years. That's stupid." He was also publicly anti-union (which is honestly pretty rare to be claimed publicly in France) and against the right to go on strikes. He said that he admire the Chinese work organization.

He was brought to the court several times :

For concealing during 15 years millions in other countries.
For rigging elections by buying votes in 2008. His election was canceled and he was sentenced to 1 year of ineligibility. He went around it by making one of his partner, Jean-Pierre Bechter, elected. In 2013, Mediapart (a french independent newspaper of investigation) released an audio of S. Dassault claiming he spent 1,7 million of euros to elect Bechter.

I am not an expert on this and a lot of what I am saying here is documented on his French wikipedia page about his politics view and his legal problems Much more can be said but it is a beginning to understand what I meant.

Serge Dasault is now dead but his children are all at different responsibility positions in the Dassault group. Here is a map of who owns the medias in France (last updated in December 2023) where you can see what Dassault owns, it seems to be less than when S. Dassault was still alive, for exemple until 2006 they also owned "L'express" French Medias who owns what?

[–] Damage@feddit.it 2 points 2 months ago

Thanks for the detailed answer!