Mediapart’s revelations that French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac held for many years a secret Swiss bank account has met with either hostile reaction or embarrassed silence from a number of his colleagues in the Socialist Party. While it is inflexible and demanding in its approach to scandals involving the Right, the Left has often demonstrated an unwillingness to face up to those other scandals in its own midst, argues Mediapart legal affairs specialist Michel Deléan, who catalogues here a (non-exhaustive) history of scams that have undermined previous socialist governments.
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When the French Left has been elected to power, it has given the impression, occasionally, that it believes political changeover comes with a licence that frees it from enacting a number of its campaign pledges. As if by removing the Right from the power it had held for too long, the Left was entitled to adopt for itself some of the less wholesome behavior of its opponents.
When François Mitterrand became France’s first socialist president in 1981, beating incumbent conservative candidate Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, there was a collective sigh of relief from many that, at last, a period of dark and often deadly scandals was at an end. The list of these was long, and notably included the mysterious death of minister Robert Boulin , the assassination of Jean de Broglie, the Giscard diamond scandal, and the criminal activities of the Gaullist militia, the SAC.
However, the hope that a new era of probity had arrived soon thinned. During the first seven-year term of office of François Mitterrand, there was a string of scandals that tarnished the Left, and which undermined its political action. To cite but the most controversial, there was the French secret service sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which claimed the life of one of the organization’s photographers, the false arrests in the so-called 'Vincennes Irishmen' affair, the Carrefour du développement financial scam and the HIV-infected blood bank scandal.
It was under François Mitterrand’s second term of office, from 1988 to 1995, that surfaced long-running investigations into illegal political financing of parties of the Left, via kickbacks from public building contracts. These involved both the Communist Party (the Gifco affair) and the Socialist Party (the Urba and SAGES affairs).
The Urba affair was so-called after the name of a consultancy firm set up by the Socialist Party in 1971 with the express aim of acting as a conduit for secret commissions paid by construction companies in exchange for being awarded contracts in socialist-run municipalities. The commissions were typically between 2% and 4% of the contract’s value.
The investigation into that scam eventually saw former Socialist Party treasurer Henri Emmanuelli given an 18-month suspended prison sentence for influence peddling at his trial in 1997. Emmanuelli, who served as a budget minister under Mitterrand’s first term, was in 1992 president (similar to speaker) of the French parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly, when he was first placed under investigation in the case. In a press conference called shortly afterwards, at which I was present, he slammed the media and justice authorities, claiming that the investigating magistrate leading the case, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, had a personal motivation for wanting to damage the Socialist Party.
Concerning the Gifco affair, also named after the company used to siphon off commissions paid for public contracts, the case against former Communist Party (CP) general secretary Robert Hue was dismissed in 2001, despite clear evidence of illicit financial transactions between Gifco and the CP. “For five years, I have suffered, along with my friends, the crushing weight of suspicion,” Hue commented after he was cleared, adding that the case “demonstrates serious dysfunctions” within the justice system.
When Mitterrand rounded on journalist 'dogs'
The Right has no monopoly on corruption for personal gain, as also illustrated under Mitterrand’s second presidential mandate with the Pechiney-Triangle affair, an insider-trading scandal in which were implicated a businessman and long-standing close friend of Mitterrand, Roger-Patrice Pelat, along with Samir Traboulsi and Alain Boublil who enjoyed close relations with the then-finance minister Pierre Bérégovoy, whom Boublil served as private secretary. The affair centred on the mass buying of shares of US company Triangle Industries shortly before French state-owned aluminium producer Pechiney launched a takeover bid for the firm.
Bérégovoy became Mitterrand’s last socialist prime minister, between 1992 and 1993, (succeeded by the conservative Edouard Balladur), and came to office announcing an anti-corruption campaign that would soon boomerang, first with the fallout from the Pechiney-Triangle case, and then, above all, with the revelation by investigative weekly Le Canard Enchaîné that Bérégovoy had been given an interest-free loan of 1 million francs by Roger-Patrice Pelat. The latter, caught up in the Pechiney-Triangle affair, was also implicated in a corruption scandal linked to the Urba political funding scam.
Amid the scandal, Bérégovoy committed suicide, on May 1st 1993, shortly after the socialists lost the parliamentary elections. In a notorious speech, François Mitterrand pinned the blame for Bérégovoy’s death on the press, describing journalists as “dogs” to whom had been thrown “the honour of a man”.
The image of an honest man placed in the stocks for a pardonable sin is one that has often been used against investigating magistrates and journalists who have no legitimacy for politicians, the only ones to be where they are through universal suffrage.
Even under the socialist government of the strict and austere Lionel Jospin, between 1997 and 2002, which had at first appeared as if vaccinated against scandals, the Elf corruption and Mnef investigations wreaked havoc. The long investigation into the first saw former Elf CEO Loïk Le Floch-Prigent, a socialist-sponsored manager of state-owned companies, indicted and eventually imprisoned. The second centred on Jospin’s finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, although, also suspected of using a secretary paid for by Elf, he was in fact placed under investigation in the two investigations. Strauss-Kahn was forced to step down from his ministerial post, before both cases against him were finally dismissed.
Meanwhile, there was more discomfort for Jospin when Roland Dumas, a lawyer and former foreign affairs minister under François Mitterrand, was forced to resign, in March 2000, from his post as president of the Constitutional Council after being placed under investigation in the Elf corruption scandal. The sentence he later received was overturned on appeal, before, in 1997, he was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence and a 150,000-euro fine for ‘abuse of trust’ in a scam involving the estate of the widow of sculptor Alberto Giacometti.
Left must save its soul by tackling scandals head-on
Politicians who find themselves the subject of a judicial or journalistic investigation often react as if they are the target of a plot. In political circles, a scandal, whether it be at a local or national level, is necessarily the work of a rival or an opponent. From some socialists comes the accusation that a journalist who carries out a damaging investigation is above all bringing political defeat to the Left, or handing propaganda to the Far Right. In every case, they are seen as participants in a plot.
The confusion between the defence of the public interest and defending the interest of a few individuals has continued for decades. While the Right historically carries an image associated with the power of money, business and finance and a caste that believes it is the legitimate master of political power, the Left, despite it all, is still regarded by many as the side of equality, respect of the common interest and of probity. It is thus that, viewed from either camp, scandals that affect the ruling Left are somehow less pardonable.
The Left has an obligation to show it is irreproachable in tackling corruption. The rigours of the law are applicable to all, in the name of equality. Yet those rare individuals on the Left who have a declared tough stance on corruption, such as the Green party’s Eva Joly, a former investigating magistrate, or industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, formerly a lawyer, are atypical. As for the resources provided to investigators of white-collar and financial crime, they are as insufficient today under the Left as they were yesterday under the Right.
The Left can only save its soul and the confidence of the electorate by dealing courageously with the scandals in its midst. Any possible resemblance of pertinence in that regarding an ongoing scandal is not necessarily coincidental.
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For more on the issues raised in this article, see links below:
The French budget minister, the Swiss account and the judicial inertia that begs major reform
The French budget minister and his secret Swiss bank account
French budget minister caught on tape discussing his secret Swiss account
Revealed: the man who handles the budget minister's own personal fortune
The budget minister and his Swiss bank account – the unanswered questions