Pave: Ex-Jack, The Adventure Continues VI

Le jour 174 de Sarko

It was customary to call on the generosity of one and all. Private individuals, whether supporters or not, businesses, or even public budgets, thus contributed to the funding of political groups.

Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack,
explaining why he believed extortion
an acceptable political practice
July 19, 2007 (Le Monde)

Before 1995, French political parties didn’t have a way to obtain financing, so they frequently asked companies for help. ... Whenever somebody accuses us [scil., Suez] of corruption, we file a lawsuit for libel.

Jean-Luc Trancart,
Then-Deputy Director General
of French water utility giant and political piggy bank
Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, explaining company policy for addressing corruption
PARIS February 4, 2003 (ICIJ)

To hear Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack, it all sounds so harmless. Politicians only "called on the generosity" of private companies, "whether supporters or not", to pay politicians' bills and enlarge their lifestyles. And the way M. Trancart tells it, private companies were only too happy to oblige, cooking their books to finance political parties as a public service. If political parties could not beg the legitimate financial support of their constituencies, well, what was left them but graft?

And how commonplace is graft in the life of France? We came across the below 2003 exposé on graft in French private water management. We skim some of the capers.

WATER AND POWER: THE FRENCH CONNECTION

PARIS February 4, 2003 (ICIJ) - Suez and Vivendi Environnement are by far the largest private water companies in the world. Together with Saur, they control 80 percent of the water market in France, leaving the rest to municipal utilities. ... Back home in France, both Suez and Vivendi have come under scrutiny in a host of criminal and civil cases, with accusations that include bribery of public officials, illegal political contributions, kickbacks, price fixing, operating cartels and fraudulent accounting.

... A handful of separate judicial inquiries in Paris have alleged that subsidiaries of Suez, Vivendi and other companies financed Chirac's party through illegal commissions in exchange for public contracts ranging from elevator maintenance to water concessions. Prosecutors claimed the Vivendi and Suez subsidiaries formed a "pact of corruption" for public construction contracts in the province of Île-de-France, which surrounds Paris, according to court records.

• In 1997, the former mayor of Angouleme, Jean-Michel Boucheron, was sentenced to two years in prison and fined $172,000 for taking a $55,000 bribe from Vivendi. In return for Boucheron’s approval of a water-distribution contract, Vivendi put him on its payroll for a job that did not exist.
• In 1996, Vivendi’s deputy director general, Jean-Dominique Deschamps, was found guilty of paying illegal commissions to political parties in exchange for obtaining water contracts in approximately 70 French cities. Deschamps was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $27,000.
• Bribery charges against Michel Noir, mayor of Lyon, in 1995 forced his resignation. According to the accusations, Noir, a leader of Chirac’s party, benefited from secret bank accounts opened in Switzerland by his son-in-law, Pierre Borton, and fed by Saur’s corporate owner, Bouygues, and by Dumez-Nigeria, a Suez subsidiary at the time. Between 1990 and 1995, about $370 million passed through these Swiss bank accounts in anonymous transfers from the account Dumez held at a Paris bank. Prosecutors charge that $2 million of this money went to Noir. A court in 1995 sentenced Noir to a suspended sentence of 15 months in prison. The case, reopened after Noir appealed, was scheduled to go to court in Lyon in January 2003.
• In an earlier case, from 1991, André Fougerousse, the mayor of Ostwald, on the outskirts of Strasbourg, and municipal counselor of Strasbourg, resigned his post after he had been accused of receiving illegal payments from Suez, Générale des Eaux (Vivendi) and Saur. The three companies allegedly financed his holiday trips and paid 500,000 French francs to the Ostwald municipal government, which used it to pay Christmas bonuses. Fougerousse did not deny the accusations but claimed they were normal, arguing that other elected city officials had enjoyed similar favors.

[P]rosecutors in October 2002 reopened a corruption investigation of RPR congressman Richard Cazenave, two former Suez executives and a Swiss financial adviser.

The case involves allegations of false invoicing at Cofreth, a Grenoble heating company and Suez subsidiary, which had been directed by Cazenave until 1995. Cofreth allegedly paid about $1.5 million to shell companies based in Monaco and London, which issued false invoices. The money was allegedly channelled through Swiss bank accounts to Raymond Roux, a former Suez executive, and to Jean-Claude Méry, an RPR* financier, according to court records.

... [Michel] Roussin** was Jacques Chirac's chief of staff between 1989 and 1993, when Chirac was mayor of Paris. In [a privately videotaped confession], Méry said that Chirac sometimes personally supervised his money deliveries.

Worth the full read.

------------------------------------
* RPR = Rassemblement pour la République, (Rally for the Republic) Guallist political party founded by Not-Yet-Jack in 1976, eventually merging into the present day Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP).

** PARIS October 27, 2005 (Guardian): Michel Roussin, 66, was given a four-year suspended sentence and a €50,000 (£35,000) fine for his involvement in a €70m kickback scheme at Paris City Hall when Mr Chirac was mayor. Illegal funds were given to politicians in exchange for contracts to build or repair schools between 1989 and 1995, when Mr Chirac became president.

PFFT (What is this?): Forced to practice graft 0 | Rayonnement français 0