A diplomat at the French Embassy in Benin in July 2008, Françoise Nicolas was repatriated to France in 2010 after an attack against her following her discovery of a scandal suggesting the embezzlement of public funds in Benin.

Since Tuesday, March 16, 2021, Françoise Nicolas, a former official at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been completely removed from the ministry. “In 2009, I did not denounce but internally reported these embezzlement of public funds for which I was responsible. Today, I denounce them! ”, repeated the whistleblower on Twitter on Monday, May 24, 2021

Being in exchange for “Scholarships, Missions, and Invitations” at the French Embassy in Cotonou at the time, Françoise Nicolas reported the implementation of a fictitious expenditure system since December 2009: “The files were empty but the expenses were very real.”

Alerts to the embassy hierarchy, headed at the time by Hervé Besançot, several times seized the central administration in Paris... all his actions failed to bring about a “disciplinary repatriation”.