Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, faced embarrassment on Thursday over reports that an orchestra led by his glamorous violinist wife has links to a string of murky figures, from an African dictator’s right-hand man to a convicted tax fraudster, reports The Telegraph.
Anne Gravoin, 50, is a classically trained violinist who regularly plays with veteran French rocker Johnny Hallyday and other Gallic crooners, earning her the nickname of “violinist to the stars”.
However, her reported dream has always been to play with the very top musicians of the classical world. “She’d had enough of being seen as a pop musician,” a friend told Nouvel Obs, the weekly magazine.
So when a wealthy Kuwait-based businessman, Zouhir Boudemagh, offered to put her at the helm of an “orchestra to promote peace and fraternity” three years ago, she jumped at the chance.
On January 8, one of her musical dreams came true when she led her Alma Chamber Orchestra at Paris’ new Philharmonie concert hall in accompanying Martha Argerich, the legendary Argentinean pianist.
In the audience sat a brochette of French political heavyweights, from her prime minister husband to Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, president François Hollande’s advisor, as well as TV celebrities.
Some reviews of the quality of the ensemble have been damning, with Le Figaro’s music critic, Christian Merlin, slamming it as an orchestra of “mercenaries” with a “cold and flat string sonority”.
“It takes much more than a few phone calls to forge a common sound – that’s the musical lesson of this concert over and above the humanitarian one,” he wrote.
Ms Gravoin reportedly has little time for such snooty reviews, dismissing them with the phrase: “The purists can go to hell.”
She is now facing far more embarrassing revelations that the orchestra is kept afloat thanks to a string of individuals with close links to “Françafrique” – France’s often murky ties to African dictators harking back to its colonial days.
The initial main benefactor was Mr Boudemagh, an Algerian former pilot with high-level defence contacts who runs a small luxury car company which made losses of €6.4 million (£5 million) last year for a turnover of less than €400,000.
Last April, he sought new partners for the orchestra’s South Africa tour, calling in his “friends” Jean-Yves Ollivier and Ivor Ichikowitz, both known to be close to Denis Sassous-Nguesso, president of Congo-Brazzaville who has reigned over the country for the past 32 years and just changed the constitution to continue doing so.