The difficult world of French politics is within the highlight in the meanwhile attributable to former president Nicolas Sarkozy occurring trial for allegedly accepting unlawful marketing campaign financing from the late Libyan chief Muammar Gaddafi.
Alongside twelve different suspects, together with former shut aides, Sarkozy (pictured) has been charged with devising a pact with Gaddafi to fund his 2007 successful presidential marketing campaign. Nevertheless, this isn’t Sarkozy’s first rodeo with the French regulation courts, and in the event you take a look at the record of earlier French presidents and ministers who’ve additionally fallen foul of the regulation, it appears the French, regardless of their love of guidelines and laws, are simply as fallible as different nationalities when energy goes to their heads.
Fortunately, evidently one other trait of the French is a love of justice which has meant that even the heads of state usually are not above being investigated and prosecuted by the French justice system. So to assuage our human want to observe the mighty fall, right here’s a roundup of a few of the greatest scandals to hit French politics within the final fifty years and the way the French system (and the French newspapers) introduced the scandals to mild.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing – President of France 1974 – 1981
Giscard d’Estaing was concerned in a scandal known as “l’affaire des diamants” (the diamonds affair) which occurred when he was the French Minister of Finance. In response to stories by the newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné, he was allegedly provided two diamonds from the President of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa.
Giscard d’Estaing refuted the accusations, saying he had offered the diamonds and donated the proceeds to the Central African Crimson Cross. Nevertheless, the top of the native Crimson Cross society (who later misplaced her job) publicly denied the French president’s claims and the entire saga created a stain on his presidency which in the end led to him shedding his 1981 bid for re-election.
Jacques Chirac – President of France 1995 – 2007
In 2011, Chirac was discovered responsible and convicted for embezzlement and breach of belief in relation to 21 bogus jobs and a cost of unlawful battle of curiosity regarding seven jobs. The fees dated again to his time as mayor of Paris.
Though he didn’t attend the trial attributable to “reminiscence lapses” and had pleaded not responsible to the costs, he was given a two-year suspended jail sentence for paying members of the Rally for the Republic (RPR) occasion for municipal jobs that didn’t exist.
Seven others have been additionally discovered responsible together with Jean de Gaulle, grandson of former French president Charles de Gaulle, who acquired a three-month suspended time period and France’s former Overseas Minister Alain Juppe who was given a 14-month suspended sentence.
François Mitterrand – President of France 1981 – 1995
From 1982 to 1986, François Mitterrand established an anti-terror unit involving wiretapping – an uncommon transfer because it bypassed the police and judiciary channels. One of many scandals dubbed the “Irish of Vincennes” concerned members of the unit being accused of planting weapons and explosives in a Vincennes house belonging to 3 Irish nationals who have been then arrested on terrorism fees. Extra worryingly, it appeared that the unit, underneath unlawful presidential orders, obtained wiretaps on many others together with journalists and politicians who might have threatened to disclose parts of his non-public life (together with the truth that he had an illegitimate daughter along with his mistress Anne Pingeot, and his half within the Vichy regime in the course of the warfare).
After greater than 20 years of authorized wrangling, the affair lastly got here to court docket in 2005 the place it was revealed that Mitterrand was the principal instigator of the unit the place over 3000 illegally obtained wire faucets have been carried out. Seven members of the President’s anti-terrorist unit have been convicted and Mitterrand was designated because the “inspirator and basically the controller of the operation.”
As a footnote to the non-public life he wished to maintain secret, his spouse Danielle allowed Mitterand’s mistress and 20- year-old illegitimate daughter, Mazarine, to attend his funeral when he died of most cancers in 1996 aged 79 – an sickness he had additionally saved secret all through his presidency.
Nicolas Sarkozy – President of France 2007 – 2012
Sarkozy was beforehand in court docket in 2021 for the Bygmalion scandal which charged Sarkozy with diverting from his marketing campaign funds to be spent on lavish occasions which he subsequently tried to cowl up by hiring a PR agency. Sarkozy was convicted for violating France’s marketing campaign finance spending restrict regulation (he spent no less than €42.8 million on his second-round presidential marketing campaign, nearly double the authorized restrict) and was given a one-year jail sentence which he opted to serve at house with an digital tag.
Throughout his present 2025 trial involving Gaddafi, he’s pleading not responsible and has stated in open court docket: “You’ll by no means ever discover a single euro, a single Libyan cent in my marketing campaign…I’ve at all times assumed my obligations and I intend to take action throughout these 4 months of hearings.”
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François Fillon – Prime Minister of France 2007 – 2012
In 2020, French ex-Prime Minister François Fillon and his spouse obtained jail sentences for corruption together with misuse of public funds, embezzlement, aggravated fraud, forgery, and falsification of data.
The politician – who was the presidential candidate in 2017 however was compelled out when the allegations got here to mild – was discovered responsible of paying his spouse Penelope Fillon €1.156m for work she by no means carried out as a parliamentary aide.
After an enchantment, Fillon’s jail sentence was shortened to 4 years with three years suspended and his spouse acquired a two-year suspended jail sentence with fines of €375,000 for every of them.
François Hollande – President of France 2012 – 2017
Nicknamed Flamby by his detractors for his flabby look (the model identify of a French crème caramel dessert) Hollande appears to have saved his nostril clear by way of felony convictions and corruption, nevertheless he did get into scorching water when in 2014 he was photographed utilizing the key service to help his intercourse trysts with actress Julie Gayet, 20 years his junior. This included a late-night drive on the again of a moped pushed by a secret service worker who would later ship the couple breakfast croissants.
Regardless of the French supposed nonchalance concerning romantic affairs of their public figures and their insistence that politicians love lives ought to stay off-limits, the press had a area day when it was revealed that though he had break up from his spouse, fellow politician Ségolène Royal, in 2007, this relationship had overlapped with one other he was having with journalist Valérie Trierweiler. After seeing the stories within the press of Hollande’s affair with Gayet, Trierweiler needed to be hospitalised for emotional exhaustion.
Though Hollande later went onto marry Gayet in 2022, he didn’t come off fully unstained after Trierweiler launched a memoir known as “Thanks for this second” which went into salacious element about their affair but additionally revealed that regardless of being a socialist and championing the under-privileged, Hollande was alleged to have retained snobbish views concerning the poor which dented his recognition. Unusually he didn’t run for a second time period and was changed when the centrist Emmanuel Macron was voted in in the course of the 2017 election.
So there you will have it….nobody appears to flee the scrutiny of the French courts or the press ceaselessly, and in the event you’re all for extra political and enterprise information in France and Europe, check out our weblog articles you’ll discover lots to encourage and inform you.
