Gérald Darmanin

His maternal grandfather, Moussa Ouakid, born in 1907 in the douar (a camp of Arabic tents or small rural village of few little houses) Ouled Ghalia, in the Ouarsenis, in Algeria, was a Chief Warrant Officer in the French Army and decorated with the Médaille militaire.

He served in the Algerian tirailleurs and was also a résistant in the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) during the Second World War and a Harki during the Algerian War.

Darmanin struggled academically while attending a public school in Valenciennes, so his parents decided to pay for private education in Paris.

When they ran out of money for tuition, the school allowed Darmanin to finish his studies for free; in exchange, he had to spend years working as a hall monitor.

After working odd jobs that included singing in the metro and waiting tables, he enrolled at Sciences Po Lille., following a year at Institut Catholique de Paris ICP in its preparatory school ("prépa" or "classe préparatoire") for entrance to Institutes of Political Studies IEP (known as Sciences Po) including the courses of a first year of DEUG in History (the daughter of Fouad II the last King of Egypt Princess Fawzia-Latifa of Egypt and Michel Fayad were then his classmates).

Early on, Darminin worked as a parliamentary assistant for conservative MP Isabelle Vasseur before joining former minister and then Member of the European Parliament Jacques Toubon.

He was taken under the wing of Toubon, who introduced him to UMP leaders such as Xavier Bertrand and helped him become chief of staff to Sarkozy's Minister of Sports, David Douillet.

Gérald Moussa Darmanin (born 11 October 1982) is a French politician who has been serving as Minister of the Interior in the governments of Prime Ministers Jean Castex, Élisabeth Borne and Gabriel Attal since 2020.

In the 2012 legislative election, Darmanin was elected to the National Assembly in the tenth constituency of Nord; at the time, he was one of the country's youngest lawmakers.

He ran two years later for election as Mayor of Tourcoing and won, establishing himself on the national political scene.

Darmanin was Mayor of Tourcoing from 2014 to 2017 and Minister of Public Action and Accounts in the first and second governments of Prime Minister Édouard Philippe from 2017 until 2020.

Darmanin was born to a working-class family with Algerian and Maltese roots.

His father, Gérard Darmanin, managed a bistro and his mother, Annie Ouakid, worked as a cleaner.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy brought Darmanin on board as director of his primary election campaign in 2016.

A former member of The Republicans (LR), Darmanin has been a member of La République En Marche! (REM) since 2017.

In response to the Fillon affair, Darmanin renounced his support for LR candidate François Fillon in the 2017 presidential election and resigned from his position as the party's deputy general secretary.

In May 2017, Darmanin was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron to be Minister of Public Action and Accounts in the First Philippe government.

In this capacity, he supported Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy and Finance, although himself a cabinet member.

At the time of his appointment, he was one of the youngest members in Édouard Philippe's government.

Soon after taking office, Darmanin announced plans to achieve 4.5 billion euros ($5.13 billion) in savings on the French government's operational budget in 2017.

That year, he managed to bring the country's budget deficit below the EU-mandated limit of 3 percent of GDP, the first time in a decade for France.

He also helped implement Macron's main tax reforms and oversaw an overhaul of tax collection.

In 2018 Darmanin was accused of sexual coercion and harassment by two women relating to alleged misconduct in 2009 and between 2014 and 2017, with one of the women alleging that while Mayor of Tourcoing he asked for sexual favours in exchange for providing her with social housing.

However prosecutors dropped the case, claiming an inability to determine an "absence of consent", as Darmanin denied both allegations.

In 2019, Darmanin oversaw an widely discussed agreement between Google and French tax authorities, marking the end of a four-year investigation that looked at whether the company routed profits from its French activities to Ireland, which was a lower-tax jurisdiction at the time.

Google eventually agreed to pay almost 1 billion euros to settle all of its litigation with the tax authorities.

In the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Darmanin oversaw the government's efforts to mobilise 150 billion euros to support industries the hardest hit by the crisis as part of a response that pushed debt to record levels.

In June 2020, the Court of Appeal of Paris ordered the reopening of the investigation.

In the 2020 municipal election, Darmanin was reelected as Mayor of Tourcoing but resigned soon thereafter.

In 2020, Darmanin was appointed Minister of the Interior in the government of Prime Minister Jean Castex, succeeding Christophe Castaner.

At the age of thirty-seven, Darmanin became the youngest Minister of the Interior of the Fifth Republic.

Following the murder of Samuel Paty by an Islamic terrorist in October 2020, Darmanin announced a large police sweep against several individuals.

He also ordered the closing of the Pantin mosque in the Parisian suburb Seine-Saint-Denis after it re-broadcast a video containing false allegations about Paty.

Darmanin subsequently ordered the dissolution of other associations with ties to radical Islam and deemed "separatist".

In response to the 2020 Nice stabbing committed by a Tunisian migrant, Darmanin negotiated deportation procedures with Tunisia.

In February 2020, Darmanin sponsored a bill that French lawmakers said they hoped would uproot radical Islam in France.

Darmanin said the aim of the bill is to stop "an Islamist hostile takeover targeting Muslims".

In March 2021, Darmanin went to court to prevent the building of a new mosque in Strasbourg, arguing dark money was involved in the project.

In 2022, Darmanin closed the Islamic website La Voie Droite using the 2021 legislation.

Also based on that legislation, he filed a successive objection against the city of Grenoble's decision to allow the use of body-covering "burkini" bathing suits for women in municipal pools in May 2022.