The art and craft of cheating: in France, c’est la vie

Colin Randall

• Last Updated: November 22. 2009 8:09PM UAE / November 22. 2009 4:09PM GMT

A revered French footballer, Thierry Henry, flicks the ball with his hand and then taps it across the face of goal for William Gallas to score – sending France to the 2010 Word Cup in South Africa. The world sympathises with the Republic of Ireland, cheated out of a possible place in the finals, but Henry shrugs his shoulders and blames the referee for failing to spot his offence.

It is what my wife, who is also French, calls her compatriots’ embrace of craftiness. She still recalls her amazement, on arriving in northern England as an au pair, at seeing people placing the correct coins in a money box when picking up copies of the evening newspaper. “The French would take the papers,” she said. “But they wouldn’t pay.”

Can this apparent rejection of authority and trust be part of the explanation for the extraordinary procession of high-ranking public figures who have fallen foul of French criminal law?

Perhaps Henry, born in Paris of parents from the French Caribbean and therefore as French as my wife, and the people she assumed would simply steal the newspaper, are merely asserting their republican rights: the liberté to break rules they find inconvenient and the égalité that enables everyone to act as if part of a belligerent, ungovernable fraternité.

But is there another developed country where the most recent former president would join the most recent former prime minister and a former interior minister in facing criminal charges? Or, indeed, where another former prime minister might put his own brush with the law behind him and quickly return to high office? In France, Jacques Chirac, Dominique de Villepin and Charles Pasqua, and Alain Juppé before them, have found themselves pursued by legal authorities to answer allegations that they, too, have been up to a spot of craftiness.

As interior minister, a position he held twice, Charles Pasqua was known as Number One Cop. Last month, a Parisian court imposed a one-year jail sentence for his role in the illegal sale of arms to Angola. Mr Pasqua, who is appealing and is not yet required to go to prison, had been named in previous scandals, including that surrounding payoffs made by Saddam Hussein’s government to various western recipients during the oil-for-food programme.

In an indignant response to his conviction, he claimed a number of government figures, including Mr Chirac, Mr Juppé and the late socialist president François Mitterrand, were fully aware of the trade. Indeed, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, who served as an adviser to his father, was also among those convicted.

Mr Pasqua’s allegations have been denied, but Mr Chirac soon had another pressing matter on his mind: an investigating magistrate’s announcement that he should stand trial on a separate matter, arising from the same dubious practices that saw Juppé receive a suspended sentence five years ago. Bogus jobs had been created for ghost employees at the Paris City Hall during Mr Chirac’s spell as mayor, with the effect that the municipality paid the salaries of officials of his political party, the RPR. Mr Chirac has dismissed accusations of his own involvement, choosing a glorious word coined by the poet Arthur Rimbaud: abracadabrantesque.

The most astonishing case of all, however, involves Mr de Villepin and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. It dates from when both were in Mr Chirac’s government – Mr de Villepin as foreign secretary, Mr Sarkozy as interior minister – and both saw themselves as his natural successor. The public prosecutor has demanded an 18-month suspended sentence and a stiff fine for Mr de Villepin if he is convicted of turning a blind eye to a plot by others to smear his bitter rival with allegations that he knew to be untrue.

For critics of France, the series of high profile trials, and countless other cases from recent years embroiling central and provincial government figures, show that the country has a long way to go before its reputation for shady practices can be shrugged off.

Another view would be that the trials reflect admirable efforts by a modern breed of French investigators to ensure that even the wealthy and powerful are not above the law, and that this pursuit of wrongdoing at the highest levels compares favourably with the handling of political scandals in neighbouring countries. And in fairness, the reaction in France to Thierry Henry’s sleight of hand was one of acute embarrassment, however short-lived that may prove to be.

In any event, Dominique de Villepin can take heart from a bizarre rise in popularity detected by the opinion polls as he stood trial.

Rehabilitation, it appears, comes swiftly in France. Mr Chirac was dogged by suspicions of corruption throughout his presidency, but also saw his ratings improve after he left the Elysée. The memory of François Mitterrand is still cherished by many French socialists despite revelations that he had people bugged and used state resources to keep his mistress and illegitimate daughter, and the state of his health, out of the public eye.

If convicted, Mr de Villepin would undoubtedly take his appeal to the highest tribunal in the land, the court of cassation. In the meantime, he may be encouraged by the experience of Alain Juppé who, having served a one-year exclusion from civic life by taking an academic position in Montreal, promptly returned to Bordeaux to win back his old role as city mayor.

Even as Mr de Villepin awaits judgment day, due in January, there is speculation in France that he is planning his own return to grace: as a rival to Mr Sarkozy in the presidential elections of 2012.

Colin Randall is a contributing editor to The National and former Paris bureau chief of The Daily Telegraph

crandall@thenational.ae