Since May 2023, Loup Bommier has been working closely with the Azerbaijani diplomatic representation in France. However, in the landscape of influence, the controversial mayor of Gurgy-le-Château is not just anyone. Portrait.
Born on November 10, 1984 in Djibouti, Loup Bommier studied, according to his LinkedIn profile, at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. His thesis, defended in 2018, was entitled “L'objectif de neutralité du droit fiscal comme fondement d'une imposition unititaire de l'entreprise”. A parliamentary assistant between 2009 and 2012, Loup Bommier became a lawyer when he was sworn in on November 25, 2013. His law firm, LBO PARTNERS, was then established in August 2014, and reopened in February 2020.
In addition to his political activities, Loup Bommier is a tax lawyer and a member of the Patrimonium team in Paris.
On the political side, he became active in the Les Républicains party in the early 2010s. In May 2021, following the resignation for “professional reasons” of the mayor of the commune of Gurgy-le-Château (45 inhabitants), located in the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region, he was elected mayor. However, in 2020, he distanced himself from the Republicans, claiming to have "lost faith in the parties of the Right and the Center. Today, there is no leader and no vision", and moved closer to Eric Zemmour's far-right Reconquête! party. He became the first mayor to endorse Eric Zemmour, then a candidate in the 2022 presidential election.
As a candidate for Reconquête! in the 2022 legislative elections for the 4th constituency of Côte-d'Or, Loup Bommier received just 4.75% of the vote.
An article published by France Bleu in May 2023 indicates that the mayor of Grugy-le-Château has since distanced himself from the Reconquête! party. In 2024, he joined Eric Ciotti's Union des Droites pour la République, an ally of the Rassemblement National, as deputy departmental referent for the Côte-d'Or.
It's difficult to date Loup Bommier's first relationship with Azerbaijan precisely. However, an element of his biography could date them back to 2017. Loup Bommier was a parliamentary aide to Les Républicains senator Alain Houpert, a very active member of the Azerbaijan lobby in France, a member of the Association des Amis de l'Azerbaïdjan and president of the France-Azerbaijan friendship group in the French Senate. You can find his portrait here.
In 2017, Alain Houpert began frequenting Azerbaijan's diplomatic representation. Loup Bommier, then also a member of the Les Républicains party, presumably joins in the same movement, alongside his former employer. In May 2018, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Azerbaijan, he was seated at the table of Azerbaijani ambassador to France Elchin Amirbayov, alongside Francis Kalifat, then president of the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF) and currently chairman of the board of the European Jewish Congress.
In May 2023, several years later, he was with Michel Odin, director of the classical dance magazine “Danser”, at the Azerbaijani embassy “as part of the cultural cooperation project around the Baku ballet”. Alongside stalwarts of the Azerbaijan lobby such as Mirvari Fataliyeva and Fuad Muradov, discussions took place on how to make this collaboration a reality.
This manifested itself first and foremost in a trip to Azerbaijan, and not just anywhere: to Shushi. The showcase city, of strategic importance in the Azerbaijani dictatorship's plans for influence, was masked as the “cradle of Azerbaijani culture” by state propaganda. It had previously been taken from Armenian forces by Azerbaijan during the 44-Day War in 2020 and emptied of its Armenian inhabitants. During their stay, Michel Odin and Loup Bommier met Soltan Mammadov, President of the France-Azerbaijan Friendship Group, and Azerbaijan's Deputy Minister of Culture, Seadet Yusifova. A visit to singer Fidan Haciyeva's music school was also organized.
On his social networks, Loup Bommier has publicly mentioned this trip. It's interesting to note, however, that the publication is drowned in a lyrical outburst disconnected from reality, in which the elected representative describes Artsakh as a “garden of black earth”, where people are searching, between heaven and earth, for the paths to lasting peace".
Make no mistake: the Azerbaijani regime relies in part on these pacifist, fragmented visions, which systematically omit the exactions perpetrated by Azerbaijan against Armenian civilians, the destruction of Artsakh's Armenian heritage, ethnic cleansing, and the new warlike impulses of Aliyev's dictatorship. Behind their seemingly innocent posturing, these messages are the products of Azerbaijani propaganda.
Loup Bommier and Michel Odin's trip to Azerbaijan did not go unnoticed, and was relayed by part of Azerbaijan's pro-regime media galaxy. Quoted by the media outlet Veten Sesi, Loup Bommier, galvanized by his trip, was quoted as saying: "In Azerbaijan, mountainous regions and beautiful places are valued and recognized. That's a very positive thing. After arriving in Shusha, I realized how important these regions are for Azerbaijan. Some of the country's leading cultural figures were born here. I now understand the importance of these territories for Azerbaijan, and the importance attached to their restitution."
In our article “On the self-feeding of Azerbaijan's lobbying networks: the French far right at the embassy”, we noted Loup Bommier's presence at the Azerbaijani embassy in November 2023 during a debate organized by the Association des Amis de l'Azerbaïdjan, proof that “cooperation” was continuing.
Shortly afterwards, in September 2024, Michel Odin and Loup Bommier co-founded a company “publishing magazines and periodicals”. Are the two participants in the Azerbaijan-sponsored trip to Artsakh, who had nothing to do with each other before their meeting at the embassy in May 2023, about to create new propaganda relays for Azerbaijan in France? We'll be watching closely.
However, Loup Bommier's relationship with authoritarian, warlike and tyrannical regimes doesn't stop with Azerbaijan. Bommier has been identified as a “false observer” by the European Platform for Democratic Elections.
He was an “observer” at the Russian presidential elections in March 2024, which were riddled with fraud according to numerous sources and reports. Commenting on the elections, he said: "The question now is how we can present Russia as a strong democratic state so that it can be included in the dialogue with other democratic countries in the world. I was therefore very eager to come and see how the elections are organized in Russia, and I can say that I was not disappointed. It's a very well organized procedure".
The same year, in October 2024, he also took part in the Georgian parliamentary elections, whose authoritarian and pro-Russian turn has been documented by multiple sources this year. Emphasizing his capacity as an “expert” rather than an observer in the context of these elections, Loup Bommier stated that the Georgian parliamentary elections had been transparent, declaring that "there was no possibility of electoral fraud, and all the members of the political parties know this well, since they themselves took part in the commission. In terms of compliance with the various conditions, the electoral process in Georgia was at a higher level than in some democratic countries of the European Union". As a reminder, the elections were also considered fraudulent by many observers.
Loup Bommier of course denied any “collusion with the powers that be”. He also indicated that he had visited “Tbilisi, the capital, but also a region in the east of the country, where the parliamentarian who invited me is from”. It should be noted that the regions of Kvemo Kartli and Kakheti, in eastern Georgia, have the largest populations of Azerbaijani origin, the country's most significant ethnic minority. The article in Le Bien Public states that the mayor of Grugy-le-Château had also been invited to “observe” the elections in Azerbaijan.
Loup Bommier has emerged as a member of the new generation of the Azerbaijan lobby in France. Elected and responsible in a French political party, he is an asset to Ilham Aliyev's dictatorship in its campaign of influence to launder its crimes. We will continue to document his actions.
