I read this morning that Gaston Flosse has been elected as president of French Polynesia for the umpteenth time. Who is Gaston Flosse? He is a right-of-centre politician with a long track record of convictions for a slew of offences, including complicity to run an illegal gambling organisation, illegal conflict of business and political interests, embezzlement, obstruction of a magistrate in the execution of his duties, and destruction of material evidence in a criminal investigation. You name it, he has done it. Oh, and he is also suspected of being involved in the murder of a journalist who, it is alleged, had evidence linking him to Clearstream, a not-so-clear bank with a reputation for money-laundering.
Patrick Balkany.
Currently a UMP deputy and mayor in the Paris region, his criminal record includes fictitious salaries for non-existent municipal employees and slanderous allegations of corruption. He has physically threatened polical opponents, sexually harrassed female staff and other politicians, been accused of rape and sexual aggression, and threatened one of his lovers with a handgun (she said) in order to force her to commit a fellation upon him.
Harlem Désir.
18 months suspended and a fine of 30,000 francs for misuse of corporate assets and paying himself a salary of 10,500 francs for a fictitious job. He is the current chairman of the French Socialist Party and a European MP.
Jean-François Mancel.
Found guilty in 2000 of illegal conflict of interests and given an 18-month suspended sentence and a fine of 30,000 euros, he is currently a member of parliament.
Jacques Mellick.
No longer active in politics, he was elected as mayor for the town of Béthune after being found guilty of perjury and false witness statement in an affair involving match-fixing in football.
Pierre Bédier.
Re-elected as a General Counselor for the Yvelines region after being convicted of passive corruption and misuse of company assets. He received a sentence of 18 months suspended and a fine of 50,000 euros.
Henri Emmanuelli.
A former Socialist Party State Secretary, he is currently a General Council president. Convicted in 1997 for influence peddling, he was handed down an 18-month suspended sentence and a two-year suspension of his civic rights.
Alain Juppé.
Mayor of Bordeaux since 2006. Illegal campaign financing and fictitious jobs which led him to be convicted in 2004 of conflict of interest, embezzlement and breach of trust. 18 months suspended and ten years of ineligibility to stand for an electoral mandate. Reduced on appeal to 14 months suspended and one year of ineligibility.
These are but a few of the many corrupt politicians who get re-elected, so it's not surprising that yet another man with a shady background is trying to do the same thing today. He is Jérôme Cahuzac, a former budget minister in charge of tax collection who was recently charged with having a money laundering bank account in Switzerland and subsequently chucked out of office for lying about it in parliament.
It's a curious phenomenon that I just don't understand, and I'm not the only one, seeing as ne'er a month goes by without some journalist or psychologist or someone musing in the press about the reasons for it. Some say it's because giving these people a second chance makes them feel better about their own skeletons in their own cupboards, and others put it down to 'supporting the underdog', which French people like to say they do. As for me, my jury's still out on the question.
So, would you vote for a politician who has been found guilty of corruption? Does this happen in your own country to any great degree?
During the last few months we have witnessed the long-running and amusing Cope-Fillon own-foot-shooting-into spectacle which has revealed how the French right cheats in its own internal elections, we have been ROTFL at the bitchy actor catfighting spat antics during the Depardieu tax exile episode, and we are now front-row viewers of yet more proof that French politicians and their flunkies-hangers on seem resolutely intent on imitating a bunch of drunken clowns running round a minefield.
So are you sitting comfortably children? Good. Then we'll begin.
This instalment features a Socialist called Jérôme Cahuzac, and he is the latest victim of the muck-rakin... 'investigative journalism' site Mediapart, which is much-feared in political circles because of its bad-boy habit of dropping politicians in steaming vats of the proverbial.
Mediapart alleged in a recent edition that Cahuzac had a dodgy-looking Swiss bank account at the UBS bank for many years before political circumstances made him decide to move his money to somewhere even harder to trace - a bank in Singapore. Cahuzac vehemently denied the story, and that's not surprising of course, particularly when one knows that he just happens to be the current Junior Budget Minister at the Economy Ministry and that he puts himself across as being the incarnation of budgetary rigour and fiscal incorruptability. Oh dear. Hollande, who has always wittered on about not accepting wideboy geezers in his government, was embarassed, although he didn't sack/hasn't yet sacked him.
All very straightforward so far.
The most crucial piece of evidence that Mediapart has obtained is a recording of a phone message allegedly left by Cahuzac on a friend's mobile phone during which he discusses the UBS account. The trouble is though - the story goes - that he had *ahem* 'inadvertently' phoned the wrong number and left the message on someone else's phone. Hmmm.. Cahuzac is heard to say among other things that;
"What pisses me off is that I still have an account open with UBS. And UBS isn't exactly the most hidden of banks."
And who was the unintended recipient of the message? Well well well and looky here, it just happened to have been an old political opponent of his, the former right-wing politician (now retired from politics) Michel Gonelle. He must have been as happy as a pig in shit to hear the eminently compromising news. He decided to keep it under his hat for future use if necessary and we'll get back to him further down the page.....
Enter another protagonist in the form of Cahuzac's wife, Patricia, who is in the process of getting a divorce. Her lawyer however turns out to be the sister of political cheat and current usurpateur of the UMP presidency Jean-François Copé, and she, as (bad) luck would have it is also strongly suspected of opening a Swiss bank account back in 2005. The thot plickens.
Still keeping up? I hope so because it's not over yet by a long chalk.
So, back to Mediapart and the question of how they got the information and recording on Cahuzac. Take a bow Mister Rémy Garnier, a rather shady private investigator who was hired by Patricia Cahuzac to inquire into her husband's business and other dealings. And, by another dazzling coincidence, it just so happens that Garnier would be more than happy to see Jérôme Cahuzac chucked out of the government and into the nearest Job Shop. Because he has a grudge against him.
Garnier was a senior tax inspector back in the late Nineties when he was sent to investigate the tax affairs of a company called France Prune which, the reader will be surprised to learn, used to deal in, well, prunes. (Someone's got to do it I suppose.) Garnier recommended to his bosses that France Prune (try typing it. A pound to a penny says you won't be able to stop yourself sniggering) be wound up because of its poor finances. Trouble was though that the company was in the town of which Cahuzac was mayor so, fearing job cuts in his community, he used his political influence to get Garnier's appraisal of the company expunged. Garnier, it is said, was not a happy bunny when he found out that his superiors had overriden his conclusions.
Meanwhile, Michel Gonelle (do try and concentrate children, he's the guy upon whose phone Cahuzac erroneously left the compromising message about the UBS account) denied at first that he had ever received it, never mind given it to Mediapart, but he then changed his mind and said that he had given a taped copy of it to a famous former investigating magistrate in charge of counter-terrorism affairs. AND YES I AM BEING SERIOUS!
His name is Jean-Louis Brugière and he promptly denied ever receiving the recording, as one does. Then he, like Gonelle, changed his mind and admitted that he had received it but that he had "never listened to it" because he, as "an ethical man" found Gonelle's account of how the message landed on his phone to be suspect. This, of course, is pure poppycock (I like that expression - 'pure poppycock') and if the thinness of his excuse could be compared to the thickness of ice on a pond it would be so thin that were an ant to walk upon it it would fall through into the water to a forlorn and freezy death.
(Is anyone still reading this I wonder? Probably not. Oh well, ever onwards, ever onwards....)
But why, even if he had heard the tape, would Brugière wish to destroy the ministerial career of Jérôme Cahuzac by sending it to Mediapart? Easy-peasy according to Gonelle. It also just-happens-to-be-once-again that after leaving the magistrature Brugière entered politics as a Sarkozyst and attempted to get himself elected to parliament in the 2007 legislative elections. But it was not to be, alas and alack, because he was defeated by a Socialist candidate, who was...wait for it... no other than...guessed yet?....yup, the man 'imself, Jérôme Cahuzac! You couldn't make it up could you, and nor have I.
That's how things stand as of now, with Cazuhac's wife, Gonelle, Garnier, Brugière and others all having excellent and credible motives for wanting to see Cazuhac dipped in deep doo doo, but what about Cahuzac himself? What has he been up to in his attempts to deny the existence of the account?
The first thing he did of course - and I say "of course" because French politicians are inordinately fond of doing this - was to instruct his lawyer to begin proceedings against Mediapart for libel. But the press and its dog began noisily asking why Cahuzac didn't do what many others in his situation have done in the past in similar circumstances, which was to use a perfectly straightforward standard banking procedure for Swiss banks which allows people to ask the UBS to formally confirm in writing that they have never had an account with them. Cor blimey, said Cahuzac, "that will nail Mediapart's mouths shut!"
But strangely, very strangely, strangely strangely even, enough though, the bank declined, citing 'procedural difficulties'. "Which procedural difficulties?" the press predictably retorted, refusing to give up its bone. But they have not yet received a clear answer to that question.....
So there we have it. A murky mucky Byzantine saga of intrigue, double-dealing and lies that, had it been written by a political fiction author, would have been laughed out of every publishing house in the world because of its totally implausible plotline.
But it isn't implausible, it's real. It's 'la vie politique 'à-la-française'. You gotta larf innit.......
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Finally, may I wish all my billions of readers a very Merry Christmas Day, and I'll leave you with a short video I took a couple of days ago of some pretty Christmas lights under a beautiful dusk sky.
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