Tony Blair’s A Saint !!

I’ve previously written about the French mayoral system which basically allows, nay encourages, local mayors to run their towns as personal fiefdoms. I’ve not heard anything bad about our Monsieur Bertaina but did encounter his absolute power when he arbitrarily stopped our housebuilding project for about 10 months and hauled J and I up before him to get a ‘royal dressing down’.

I also explained that this culture does not restrict itself to small towns and villages and goes right to the very top, mentioning the ex President, Chirac (pictured), as someone tainted by stories of corruption when he was Mayor of Paris. Of course, his financial shenanigans only came to light when he left his mayoral position and became President of France but like all these nasty little foreign countries, e.g. Italy, there is a law which protects any serving President from prosecution, no matter the alleged crime.

However, now that Chirac is no longer in power, the authorities are chasing him, with all sorts of people crawling out of the woodwork to give their side of the story and what a story it is. It makes the UK MP’s Expenses scandal seem like an insignificant little issue.

So what was Chirac alleged to have done? It all comes down to the fact that the all-powerful mayors have the ability to offer huge public works contracts to companies without too much in the way of corporate governance.

Kick-backs for these contracts in the form of suitcases full of banknotes were routinely delivered to the Mayor’s office and it is rumoured that Chirac and his family spent €18,000 a month on food alone and when you consider the small salary French politicians are paid, that ‘s quite a food bill. The money was also used to favour important, but low ranking employees by providing them with chauffeur driven cars, whilst union leaders were provided with ‘inducements’ presumably to lessen the likliehood of any public disorder.

But most, if not all of this, probably went unnoticed in Paris, where French government ministers were routinely handed bundles of cash on a monthly basis as a way of increasing their meagre salaries – and this was legal. No receipts were necessary , no books or records were kept of who got the cash and how much – the cash was just handed out from a ‘special fund’ as it was known. You can see the potential for a bit of skimming here and there can’t you?

So, it’s all happening here in the courts of the French capital. The ex-President (Chirac) is being chased by the Justice Department and the current President (Sarkozy) is using the very same Justice Department to prosecute the ex-prime Minister (Dominique de Villepin) on conspiracy charges. Bet Tony Blair is glad he wasn’t a politician here! He looks like a saint compared to this lot.