'Prince of intrigue' and the oil firm scandal that mired French elite in a
slick of sleaze
Jon Henley in Paris
Monday January 22, 2001
A former French foreign minister and intimate of the late president Fran�ois
Mitterrand appears in the dock today as a Paris court begins long-awaited
hearings into France's biggest postwar sleaze scandal. Roland Dumas, who
resigned last year as France's highest legal authority, is charged, along
with his former mistress Christine Deviers-Joncour; the one-time boss of the
oil giant Elf-Aquitaine, Loik le Floch Prigent and four others, with
complicity in the misuse of Elf funds. Alfred Sirven, a former director of
Elf Aquitaine International and allegedly Mr Le Floch Prigent's chief fixer
and bagman, is believed to be in hiding in the Philippines and will be tried
in his absence. Like the others, he risks a �250,000 fine and up to five
years in prison. The trial of Mr Dumas, which coincides with an investigation
into illicit Mitterrand-era arms-trafficking in Africa allegedly involving
the late president's son, will throw a cruel new light on the shadowy,
semi-legal dealings and institutionalised corruption that flourished under
France's first Socialist president.
Intrigue
Dubbed by one newspaper "the prince of intrigue in Fran�ois Mitterrand's
palace", Mr Dumas - the highest-ranking figure to be tried for such offences
in France - is accused of benefiting from the staggering �250m Elf spent in
the early 1990s on furthering its own interests and those of the late
president at home and abroad. The trial, which is expected to last four
weeks, will revolve around the sums paid by Elf to Ms Deviers-Joncour in
expenses, salary and commissions - an alleged total of �6.45m - between 1989
and 1993, in exchange for what the prosecution claims was a non-existent job.
Mr Dumas, 78, is accused of using his position as foreign minister to ensure
his mistress was hired by Elf, and subsequently, of profiting from the money
the company gave her to lobby him over the controversial sale of six frigates
to Taiwan by another state-controlled firm, Thompson, in 1991. Elf allegedly
promised Thompson, in exchange for a share of the profits, to use its
influence as an unofficial arm of government to help push through the sale,
which was opposed by China and, to begin with, by Mr Dumas himself - before
he inexplicably changed his mind. The affaire des fregates is currently the
focus of an altogether separate investigation, one of six probes under way
into the many-tentacled Elf scandal that have so far seen more than 20 people
placed under formal investigation. Among the cast of characters accused or
suspected of benefiting from Elf's largesse in varying aspects of the case
are Mitterand's golf partner and doctor Laurent Raillard, the former Gaullist
interior minister Charles Pasqua, Fran�oise Sagan, the author of Bonjour
Tristesse, and up to a dozen former Elf employees. To help her in her
lobbying, Elf allegedly furnished Ms Deviers-Joncour with a company credit
line of �20,000 a month and �1.7m flat on the exclusive Left Bank rue de
Lille, which witnesses say Mr Dumas routinely used for lavish parties.
According to the investigating magistrates, Eva Joly and Laurence
Vichnievsky, she bought her lover Mr Dumas extravagant gifts with Elf's cash,
including a pair of bespoke Italian shoes costing �1,110 and five antique
statues for �26,400. Mr Dumas has been unable to explain the millions of
francs that appeared on his bank balance during the early 1990s, but he has
repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, insisting that he was unaware where the
money or gifts came from - a claim investigators argue simply cannot be true.
"It is easier to crush me than to investigate the role of France itself,
which benefited greatly from this subtle game of shadows and light, which I
inherited but did not start or gain from," Mr Dumas said in one interview.
Three main players in the Elf corruption saga
Roland Dumas
Now 78, Mr Dumas was twice foreign minister and, until 1999, president of
the constitutional council, the highest legal body in the land. He was one of
Fran�ois Mitterrand's oldest, most loyal companions; theirs was a friendship
that began in the early postwar years. Silver-haired, dapper, brilliant,
charming and cultured, as a lawyer he was for 20 years one of the stars of
the Paris bar, representing the likes of Matisse and Giacometti. He was also
the executor of Picasso's will, and played a prominent role in returning the
painter's masterpiece, Guernica, to Spain. His main defence is that he is
being used to bury all that remains of Mitterrandism.
Christine Deviers-Joncour
The former mistress of Roland Dumas is alleged to have been paid more than
�6m to lobby her lover on behalf of Elf. The former lingerie model is now a
regular figure on television talkshows and has published three books telling
her side of the story, one unambiguously entitled The Whore of the Republic.
An elegant twice-married 53-year-old, Ms Deviers-Joncour's principal means of
defence in her often confused testimony has been to counter-attack, claiming
that she is now a reformed character engaged in a bitter fight against
political corruption and the Gallic penchant for high-level cover-ups.
Loik Le Floch Prigent
The president of Elf Aquitaine from 1989 to 1993, former head of the then
state-owned chemicals company R�hne-Poulenc and subsequently, the head of
SNCF, the French railways company, was once a civil service high-flyer who
has persistently denied doing anything more than acting in accordance with an
agreement worked out with Mitterrand. He claims that the president knew of
and tolerated such deals. "I'm being made a scapegoat," he said. Nonetheless,
he will be asked to explain how he came to charge his company credit card for
�6,800 worth of CDs in a single afternoon.
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,426091,00.html
