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nitpicker

(7,153 posts)
Thu Mar 22, 2018, 04:19 AM Mar 2018

Nicolas Sarkozy corruption charges reveal France's loose campaign finance practices

http://www.dw.com/en/nicolas-sarkozy-corruption-charges-reveal-frances-loose-campaign-finance-practices/a-43075459

Nicolas Sarkozy corruption charges reveal France's loose campaign finance practices

Date 21.03.2018
Author Catherine Martens

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was charged on Wednesday with corruption — and it's a lot of money in question. The French judiciary is formally investigating whether Sarkozy received as much as €50 million ($61.3 million) from Libyan ex-dictator Moammar Gadhafi for his successful 2007 election campaign. The sum is more than double the legal campaign funding limit. The payments would also violate French rules against foreign financing.

The revelation has put France's judiciary in high spirits and Sarkozy has been in police custody since Tuesday. Nevertheless, the allegations have not yet been enough to cause a public outcry.

"Morals have no place in French politics," Paris-based political scientist Jerome Sainte-Marie pointedly told DW. He says there is little expectation that politicians should act as model citizens. "Lord knows Sarkozy is not the first politician to have collected money in such an unorthodox way. There is always a lot of money floating around, especially when it comes to presidential elections," says Sainte-Marie.

The French justice system, on the other hand, began fighting that lax attitude in the early 1990s. Since the enactment of the so-called Rocard Law — named after former Prime Minister Michel Rocard – political campaigns and parties have been required to disclose all financing and donations. If illegal funds are funneled into coffers, French law allows mayoral election results to be nullified for up to one year.

That law is effective at the local level; it forced Socialist heavyweight Jack Lang to abandon his ambition to become the mayor of Paris. The problem, says political scientist Pascal Perrineau from the Sciences Po University in Paris, is that there is no political will for the practice to be applied on the national level.
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