A slew of corruption scandals on French Socialist turf have become an unwelcome distraction for the presidential campaign of François Hollande, as opponents accuse the frontrunner of ignoring shady behavior during a decade as party leader, reports Reuters.
The cases have cropped up in Socialist fiefdoms from the northern Pas-de-Calais region and city of Lille - where former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was questioned this week in a prostitution case - to the southern port city of Marseille.
As France gears up for its April-May election, the cases have provided further ammunition for the conservative UMP party and far-right National Front to attack Hollande, who polls show could win a May 6 run-off round.
Hollande, who led the Socialists as first secretary for 11 years, has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Accusations of misusing public funds and influence-peddling for construction deals concern local-level officials. But opponents say Hollande knew about shady practices and did nothing to stop them.
"Mr. Hollande ... must have known," Sebastien Huyghe, a senior UMP official, said this week. "He talks of an irreproachable republic, when he was the first to cover up this sort of depravity."
In a book called "The Rose Mafia," published on Thursday, a Socialist former mayor in northern France describes a well-oiled system of kickbacks and favor-trading between local businessmen and a high-ranking Socialist official.
"How can you believe that neither (Socialist Party First Secretary Martine) Aubry nor Hollande were ever informed of shady dealings and excesses in the Pas-de-Calais federation?" the author, Gerard Dalongeville, asks in the book.
Hollande has not responded to the accusations.
Aubry, mayor of Lille and Hollande' successor as Socalist Party head, has brushed off the allegations as the work of a man with a dubious record. Dalongeville spent eight months in police custody in 2009 and is under investigation in a probe into embezzlement in Pas-de-Calais.
"As far as I'm concerned Mr. Dalongeville is not credible, I don't hear him, I don't listen to him," Aubry told LCP television on Wednesday.
Others, however, have said there is no smoke without fire.
Arnaud Montebourg, a prominent lawmaker, has ruffled feathers among fellow Socialists by publicly blowing the whistle on suspected corruption by party officials, both in the Pas-de-Calais region and in Marseille, at a sensitive time.
Similar accusations have been levied against Hollande - not least from Aubry herself - over corruption in Marseille, a rough-and-tumble port where former local Socialist boss Jean-Noel Guerini is accused of misusing public funds.
In mid-2011, a regional official accused Guerini of running "a mediaeval system of pressure based on fear and intimidation," leading to his taking leave from the Socialist Party, whose presidential primary contest was a few months away.
The case has fuelled attacks by the right-wing Le Figaro newspaper against the Socialist Party, accused of failing to take internal action against Guerini, who retains his seat in Parliament despite being formally under investigation.
Equally rich ground for Le Figaro are the ongoing legal troubles of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, once favored to become France's next president until he was arrested on a charge, later dropped, of attempted rape in New York last May.
The ex-finance minister was questioned this week as part of an investigation into a prostitution ring that provided girls to the clients of a luxury hotel which Strauss-Kahn frequented.
Read more of this report from Reuters.