Blood Diamonds of France: is Sarkozy Corrupt? Do Bears do it in the Forest?...............
“FOR weeks, the French have been mesmerised by the Bettencourt affair, a party-donations and an alleged tax-evasion scandal concerning Liliane Bettencourt, the billionaire heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire. Now, the saga has taken an even more troubling turn, after Ms Bettencourt’s former accountant suggested that the billionaire had donated illegal sums to help finance the 2007 presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy. Claire Thibout, who worked as an accountant for Mrs Bettencourt and her (now-deceased) husband, claimed to Mediapart, a French news website, that the Bettencourts had handed €150,000 ($190,000) in cash to Mr Sarkozy’s campaign….. If the accountant’s claims are ever proved right, Mr Sarkozy would face a full political crisis. If they are not, libel cases will fly; already, on July 7th, Mr Woerth filed a suit for false accusation. The trouble for Mr Sarkozy, however, is that, even before these latest charges, various members of his government had been up to no good. Two of them have now resigned: one for charging €12,000 of cigars to expenses, another for hiring a private jet at a cost of €116,500 to fly to an aid conference on Haiti. Other offenders still remain in office, including one who booked into a luxury hotel in South Africa, and two others who misused their official lodgings. In new polls out this week, Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Front, saw her approval rating jump. And Mr Sarkozy’s fell to a miserable 26%–its lowest point since he took office in 2007.. …….”
All French presidents are corrupt. They are all proven corrupt after they leave office, or after they die. The only exception was Charles De Gaulle. Every other one after World War II either accepted bribes from French plutocrats or from Arab potentates (notoriously Chirac),and most accept blood diamonds from African despots they put in power or keep in power. Sarkozy gained his reputation as aman of law and oreder (always a suspect thing in my view: remember Giuliani and Bernie Kerik?), but he may prove in the end to be the most corrupt of them all.
French presidents are like the proverbial American bears, only the don’t doo in the forest, they doo in the Elysée Palace.
Cheers
mhg
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