Reply #35: French favours...

[cantwealljustgetalong]

The business of uncovering corruption is not for the faint-hearted. In France, Eva Joly, the country's best known magistrate, lived under 24-hour police protection for six years: six years spent in the knowledge that someone out there was being paid to track her and, given the opportunity, kill her. Joly didn't investigate Colombian drug barons or mafia networks - her work took place in a country which is one of the world's most civilised. She was investigating corruption among French politicians, lawyers and company directors.

Corruption is usually a crime of the elite, of those with access to money and power. Since the mid-1980s, France has been intermittently convulsed by scandals which have crept ever higher up the country's social ladder. Those tainted by, if not convicted of, corruption have included Jacques Chirac, Alain Juppé, Roland Dumas and (godfather of them all) François Mitterrand. These are people who are educated in the same schools, and are bound by common values and ideas. They also, according to sociologist Pierre Lascoumes, share a conviction that they are above the law. Those who have actually been sent to prison for corruption (Bernard Tapie, Loïk le Floch-Prigent, Alfred Sirven) may have been government ministers or company directors, but they did not belong to that charmed circle of the French elite. It follows that those who fight corruption are usually outside the elite, and Eva Joly was the epitome of the outsider in the fight against French corruption.

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For a period, the press loved her and the country united behind her. A handful of examining magistrates - young, dynamic warriors - were purging the corrupt old guard. Then Joly flew too high. As she opened what was to become France's biggest and most complex corruption case, the Elf investigation, she uncovered enormous bribes being offered by the then state-owned oil company, with government approval, to guarantee contracts with certain African heads of state. This had been a long established practice under governments of both left and right, but Joly found some hard evidence. Elf's business practices also brought Joly closer to home: some of the bribes paid by Elf during the 1992 purchase and construction of the former East German refinery at Leuna had apparently gone to the German CDU, Chancellor Kohl's party. It was alleged that Mitterrand, seeing Kohl slipping in the polls, ordered Elf to pay $15m into his election fund. Such accusations were too much for the French government, which lowered a curtain over Joly's work: the matter was declared secret défense, a state secret.

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One of the key factors in public perception of corruption - for good and bad - has been the press. The French press is in theory freer than the British or American, since it is not bound by sub judice, but in practice it is less free since it owes greater allegiance to elected leaders. The French press receives grants, direct and indirect, from government. Until the mid-1980s there was tacit complicity between journalists and elected politicians - and, at a higher level, between media owners and government. Tentatively, a few journalists broke the silence. In 1983, Pierre Péan wrote about the unhealthy relationship between Paris and west Africa; and in 1985, the blowing up of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, by French agents could not be ignored. But as long as they kept a respectful distance from President Mitterrand and his family, particularly his illegitimate one, the young journalists were tolerated. Then shared interests began to bring magistrates and journalists together and their idealism gave the anti-corruption cause its impetus. Tales of corruption sold copy; fame brought the magistrates strength. For a while both sides prospered.

At the same time individual press titles - Le Figaro, L'Express, TF1, Paris Match - were bought by big industrial groups: Lagardère, Dassault (armaments) and Bouygues (construction). "Businessmen, some of whom had already been fingered for corruption, moved their money into the media, knowing that no editor will publish defamatory material about one of the group's major shareholders," Gaudino told me. Articles began defending the poor victimised businessmen, attacking the unpatriotic magistrates (although some publications did continue digging, despite the change of ownership).

But even at their most powerful, journalists were only printing what the magistrates had told them. Rocking the boat with independent investigations is not part of the salaried journalist's job, and those working freelance lay themselves open to being sued - Denis Robert's recent book Révélation$ about the Luxembourg-based clearing house, Clearstream, has 20 libel cases against it, Gaudino's second b
book, The Mafia of Business Tribunals, has 43.

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But corruption weakens a state. France is a major influence in the world, yet the honesty of many of its leaders is questionable. In the last decade, 900 elected representatives and 34 ministers have been summonsed by judges (although far fewer convicted). Chirac may claim the moral high ground on the Iraq war, yet he strains the interpretation of his own country's constitution to evade prosecution for corruption at home. (The constitution rules that presidents are immune from prosecution for actions in office, but it is silent on actions before coming into office. Roland Dumas and the constitutional court ruled that immunity applied to the past too. Dumas is a political opponent of Chirac but knew he might need his help over the Elf trial.) Disregard for the law has become a national habit - as we have seen this autumn with France's attitude towards the EU stability pact. There is also the current case of France's largest bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which is facing charges in the US for lying about a takeover bid in the early 1990s when it was state-owned. Corruption in the French construction industry, too, means that the EU's "level playing field" public procurement policy - in which companies from any EU country should get equal access to contracts - is a joke which infuriates building companies in Britain and elsewhere.

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http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/ArticleView.asp?link=yes&P_Article=12357