French ministers rent home linked to ex-drug trafficker

PARIS – Two French government ministers are protesting a website’s report that they rented a vacation home linked to a Corsican drug trafficker.

Budget Minister Gerald Darmanin and Sebastien Lecornu, a junior energy minister, said in a statement on Facebook Wednesday that they plan to sue investigative website Mediapart for defamation.

Mediapart said the rented house belongs to the girlfriend of Gilbert Casanova, a former Corsican nationalist convicted of drug trafficking in 2010.

Darmanin and Lecornu acknowledged renting the house, but say Casanova’s name was not on the rental agreement. They say they followed government procedure by informing regional authorities about where they planned to vacation on the French island and no one raised objections.

President Emmanuel Macron has filed a legal complaint against a photographer covering his summer vacation.