CORRUPTION: French Corruption With Worldwide Ramifications

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Feb 1 2001 (IPS) - The ongoing process against former French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, and six other officials of the oil enterprise Elf Aquitaine on the charges of corruption and abuse of state power reveals the worldwide ramifications of the dubious practices typical of France’s politics during the 1980s and 1990s.

The prosecution accuses Dumas, who served as Foreign Minister under President Francois Mitterrand between 1984 and 1995, of manipulating state decisions to favour his former mistress Christine Deviers-Joncour.

Dumas, 78, allegedly secured a job for the 30 years younger Deviers-Joncour at Elf Aquitaine, and also misused illegal payments to her to finance his luxurious life.

Deviers-Joncour officially worked in Elf Aquitaine’s press department. But under the instructions of the company’s vice President Alfred Sirven, “the Republic’s Whore”, as Deviers- Joncour is currently named in France, exerted influence upon Dumas to promote his own plans within the enterprise.

Sirven, who now lives in the Philippines, is considered to be the mastermind behind a complicated system of illegal commissions, estimated to be in the region of 3,000 million francs (440 million dollars). From this fund, Sirven paid illegal fees to state officials worldwide.

He allegedly awarded Deviers-Joncour 6,6 million dollars in 1991, after she convinced Foreign Minister Dumas to authorise the export of war ships to Taiwan. Dumas had first vetoed this export, because he feared it would affect French diplomatic relations to the People’s Republic of China. But after some months he lifted his veto and explicitly recommended the operation.

In his defence Dumas has denied any wrong-doing. He did not know where his mistress obtained the money to buy a luxurious flat in Paris, worth more than two millions dollars, and to finance her opulent way of life, Dumas declared before the court on Tuesday.

He recognised accepting some valuable presents from Deviers- Joncour, but he paid all them back, he said.

Dumas also said, that the several million francs, that the prosecutors found in his bank account, and whose origin he couldn’t explain, come from undeclared sales of art objects and gold.

This is only one of several corruption cases in which Elf Aquitaine is involved. The former French state enterprise was privatised in 1995 and eventually taken over by the Belgian oil corporation TotalFina.

Elf supposedly bribed government officials in Gabon, Venezuela, Uzbekistan, Russia and Germany, among other countries, in order to secure contracts related to the oil business. In Germany, for instance, French justice found out, that Elf paid some 256 millions francs, some 40 millions dollars, in illegal commissions to a so called middleman, for the purchase of the East German refinery of Leuna in 1991.

The German businessman, Dieter Holzer, who took the millions from Elf, is a former weapons dealer and agent for the German secret service. He admitted, before the prosecutors in Paris, that he entertained close relations with leading officials within the government of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Although he denied that he ever paid illegal commissions to officials of Kohl’s government, French justice could at least confirm a bribe of some three million dollars to a former German deputy Defence Minister Ludwig Holger Pfahls.

The German parliamentary investigation of the affair provoked an acrimonious debate. French, Swiss and Liechtenstein prosecutors have issued several international arrest warrants against Holzer. Germany’s justice is also looking after Pfahls, who, since some three years, clandestinely lives in South East Asia.

French justice is presently dealing with several other cases of state corruption. Another lawsuit concerns the export of weapons to Angola, worth 633 million dollars. The eldest son of former French President Francois Mitterrand, Jean-Christophe, is involved in this operation.

Prosecutors accuse him of receiving 1,8 million dollars from weapons dealer Pierre Falcone as illegal payment for his mediation with the government of Angola, during the time he served as African Foreign Policy adviser to his father.

Pierre Falcone is, since December 1st 2000, being held in the Paris jail of ‘La Sante’. Jean-Christophe Mitterrand was released on bail after spending three weeks in detention. He had to pay five million francs, some 750 000 dollars, as bail money.

According to the prosecution, Falcone paid between 1992 and 1999 bribes for several hundred millions of francs to politicians and state officials in France and Africa, especially in Angola.

Falcone’s operations also expanded into Latin America, especially Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil.

Among the Angolan officials bribed by Falcone, appear the deputy Minister for the Interior and the chief of the secret service in Luanda, as well as the Ambassador in Paris, Elisio de Figuereido.

During the questioning, Falcone declared to the prosecutors, that he paid 18 million dollars to De Figuereido. “This was a fee for several services he performed for us,” Falcone said.

Falcone insisted that he didn’t pay bribes. “The money didn’t serve to buy people, but to ease things. It belongs to the operational logic in countries such as Angola,” he declared.

Apparently, the “easing of things” through illegal money also belongs to French “operational logic”. For Falcone also bribed officials in Paris, particularly at the Ministry of the Interior, contends the prosecution.

The Ministry of the Interior was involved in the dealings through the state enterprise Society for Materials, Systems and Services, also known as Sofremi. This firm, dissolved in 1999, was widely seen as a screen company for official French arm exports.

The prosecutors possess a note, written by Falcone’s secretary, Isabelle Delubac, which implies that the weapons dealer paid in 1999 some 1,7 million dollars to the Rassemblement pour la France (RPF), the political party of former Minister of the Interior, right wing Gaullist politician Charles Pasqua.

The money was supposedly used by the RPF to finance its campaign for the elections to the European Parliament of June 1999.

Falcone’s firm, Brenco International, also has branches in Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil. In Mexico Brenco obtained at least three different contracts: One concerns the sale of electronic transmission equipment for the Mexican police, the second the development of beaches in Acapulco, and the third one the renovation of oil sea platforms. It is not known how much money these contracts are worth, and whether the operations involved the bribing of Mexican officials.

Falcone also contributed with 100 000 dollars to the electoral campaign of George W. Bush. But after Bush was named President of the United States by the Supreme Court of Justice in Washington, he gave the money back.