France, corruption and a Gallic shrug

By Stuart Jeffries

PARIS: France is one of the most corrupt of all developed countries, according to a new international study.

The report, by Transparency International, shows that, among large developed nations, France is only outdone in the corruption stakes by Italy. Experts say graft affects every corner of life, from sport to politics. So endemic is it, they argue, that it simply represents the French way of doing business.

The report comes when President Jacques Chirac has again been embroiled in a corruption scandal. He has been accused of using US$340,000 from illegal sources to pay in cash for private trips to such places as New York, Japan and Mauritius for himself, his family and his friends between 1992 and 1995. Chirac claimed the money was from an official, but secret, fund usually used to pay for covert anti-terrorist activities. Judges and opposition politicians, however, doubt this as Chirac would not have had access to government funds then as he was only Mayor of Paris.

Instead, investigating magistrates want to question the President about the possibility that the money came from illegal commissions he allegedly collected from building companies to fund his RPR party, in exchange for contracts to rebuild and refurbish Paris schools.

The charge of increased corruption came in the same week that the "Angolagate" judicial investigation into illegal arms sales involving Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the late President Francois Mitterand, and former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, was quashed on a technicality.

The French public's faith in their leaders' probity has taken a battering in the past year with a succession of scandals. In May, Socialist former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas was jailed for his part in the Elf Aquitaine scandal. The trial exposed the state-sponsored corruption during the 14-year tenure of the Socialist President Mitterrand. Even Communist leader Robert Hue was accused this year of creaming money from contracts with councils run by his ailing party to swell its coffers.

France has fallen two places in one year in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. While its ranking is by no means as low as some developing countries -- Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria and Uganda have the worst ratings -- France is perceived as one of the most corrupt Western nations.

In Paris last week Peter Eigen, chairman of Transparency International, said: "There is no end in sight to the misuse of power by those in public office."

France scored 6.7 in the index (the lower the rating, the worse the perceived rate of corruption). The UK rated 8.3. Germany 7.4 and the US 7.6. The least corrupt country, says the survey, is Finland (9.9), closely followed by Denmark and New Zealand.

One reason the perceived level of French corruption has risen is the increased diligence of investigating magistrates. Their work has unearthed a series of high-profile scandals. Magistrates such as Eva Joly and Eric Halphen have become national celebrities, not least for refusing to defer to the political classes.

But France has long been perceived -- and regarded itself -- as corrupt. Anglo-Saxon probity is hardly seen as a virtue here. The French would rather live in corrupt Gaul than in crumbling Britain where the trains don't run on time. Right-wing intellectual Alain Minc argues that "there is a Latin predisposition to deals and fiddles".

A 1996 French government report estimated that the cost of tax evasion in France could be as high as $30 billion per year -- equal to two-thirds of the revenue from income tax.

The authorities are so bad at collecting income tax, and the people so good at evading it, that between a third and a half of the adult population pay none at all. Journalists, models, pilots and musicians benefit from loopholes. Other professions often declare only a part of their incomes and over-worked tax inspectors can do little to check.

It is through indirect taxes that the state recoups its losses from income-tax evasion. Social security contributions, property fees and VAT on goods and services can be prohibitive. Disturbingly for French notions of egalite, unlike progressive income tax these taxes penalize the poor. However, the most disturbing corruption scandals have concerned not politicians but sportsmen. The 1998 Tour de France was ruined after admissions by members of the Festina team that they took drugs to improve their performances. French football has also been riven with corruption. This year has been dominated by fake passport scandals in which Brazilian players have invented European relations in order to be able to play for French clubs, with the connivance of the clubs and corrupt civil servants.

But the French can forgive corruption. In April, Bernard Tapie returned to Olympique Marseille as sporting director and a minority shareholder of the football club that he shamed and almost ruined.

His appointment came four years after he had ended a jail sentence for match-fixing. Tapie epitomized the arrogance, easy money and corruption of early-Nineties France. But Marseille is back in the first division and fans as well as club officials are banking on Tapie, now 58, the wheeler-dealer businessman turned Socialist politician, to restore the club to the golden years of the late Eighties and early Nineties, when it was one of the best in Europe.

Tapie's rehabilitation is part of an intriguing phenomenon of public indifference to corruption in France. Recently former French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn was elected as a Socialist MP in a by-election in the Paris suburbs, despite facing two unresolved accusations of illegal activities.

Maybe Chirac should take heart from these trends. After all, the Gaullist candidate in the Paris mayoral elections in March, Philippe Seguin, argued that in France there was a phenomenon called une prime a la casserole -- an electoral bonus from corruption. The French seem to like their leaders to have their fingers in the pie.

Chirac must be hoping to benefit from this phenomenon when he takes on Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the presidential election next May.

-- Observer News Service