A trove of emails from the campaign of French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been posted online just days before voters go to the polls to choose the country’s next leader in a run-off against far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

The emails, which include purported details of the candidate’s alleged offshore bank accounts and drug use, have been banned from publication by French authorities who have warned it could be a criminal offence to republish or even quote from them.

About nine gigabytes of data was posted by a user called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a document-sharing site that allows anonymous posting. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for posting the data.

In a statement, Mr Macron’s political movement En Marche confirmed it had been hacked.

“The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and co-ordinated hack this evening, which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of various internal information,” the statement said.

En Marche! said the documents released online only showed the normal functioning of a presidential campaign, but authentic documents had been mixed on social media with “false documents” to sow “doubt and misinformation”.

The seriousness of this event is certain and we shall not tolerate that the vital interests of democracy be put at risk.”
En Marche! statement

An Interior Ministry official declined to comment, citing French “quiet period” rules which forbid any commentary liable to influence an election. These measures took effect at midnight (local time) on Friday and remain in effect until the last polling station closes.

Comments about the email dump began to appear on Friday evening (French time) — just hours before the official ban on campaigning began.

Leading french newspaper Le Monde said on its website it would not publish the content before the election, partly because the huge amount of data meant there was not enough time to report on it properly.

“If these documents contain revelations, Le Monde will of course publish them after having investigated them, respecting our journalistic and ethical rules, and without allowing ourselves to be exploited by the publishing calendar of anonymous actors,” it said.

The commission overseeing the French campaign said in a statement that it would hold a meeting early on Saturday after being informed of the hack and leak.

Macron’s team pointed finger at Russians

Former economy minister Mr Macron’s team has already complained about attempts to hack its systems during a fraught campaign, blaming Russian interests in part for the cyber attacks.

On April 26, the team said it had been the target of a series of attempts to steal email credentials since January, but the perpetrators had so far failed to compromise any campaign data.

The “digital fingerprints” of hacking group Pawn Storm — a Moscow-linked group US authorities believe hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computers last year — were last week linked to 160 attacks on Mr Macron’s email server and website.

In February, the Kremlin denied that it was behind any such attacks, even though Mr Macron’s camp renewed charges against Russian media and a hackers’ group operating in Ukraine.

National Front candidate Ms Le Pen is trailing 20 points in the final opinion polls, with pollsters tipping independent centrist Mr Macron to win 60-40 in Sunday’s second round of voting.

But she still believes she can pull off a surprise win and claim an “ideological victory” for her populist, anti-immigration world view, which has dominated a contest that could change Europe’s direction.

She said, win or lose, “we changed everything”.

“Even if we don’t reach our goal … there is a gigantic political force that is born’: Le Pen. Photo: Getty

She has brought her National Front party closer than ever to the presidency, riding a wave of populism and growing frustration amid working-class voters with globalisation and immigration.

Even if she loses, she is likely to be a powerful opposition figure in French politics in the coming parliamentary election campaign and beyond.

“Even if we don’t reach our goal, in any event, there is a gigantic political force that is born,” she said.

Mr Macron acknowledged the French were exasperated by the government’s ineffectiveness, but he dismissed Ms Le Pen’s vision of an infuriated country, telling RTL radio she spoke “for no-one … Madame Le Pen exploits anger and hatred”.
–with ABC