World Courant
JOHANNA LEGUERRE/AFP
Robert Bourgi has lifted the lid on his many years of labor with French and African presidents
It was January 1998 and Robert Bourgi was ready for Gabonese President Omar Bongo in an antechamber of his seaside palace in Libreville.
He was there to lift cash for the upcoming French presidential elections on behalf of the center-right Gaullist candidate Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris.
Who must be ushered into the identical antechamber than Roland Dumas, the previous French International Minister and right-hand man of the ruling Socialist President François Mitterrand, Chirac’s arch-rival.
“Good day, Bourgi,” Dumas stated. “I imagine we’re right here for a similar goal.”
Dumas claimed seniority and entered Bongo’s workplace first. A short while later he emerged and stated to Bourgi, “Don’t be concerned, there’s nonetheless slightly left!”
Instructed in Bourgi’s newly revealed memoirs They know that I do know all of it: my life in Françafriquethe anecdote says all the things in regards to the cash theft and the mutual dependency which have linked French and African politics for therefore lengthy.
For 4 many years, Robert Bourgi was on the heart of all of it.
Born in Senegal in 1945 to Lebanese Shiite mother and father, he grew as much as be a confidant of a technology of African leaders – from Omar Bongo in Gabon to Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso.
Robert Bourgi
Robert Bourgi (R) labored with a few of Africa’s biggest leaders, together with Mobutu Sese Seko of then Zaire
And in Paris he inherited the mantle of the legendary Jacques Foccart – the Gaullist who oversaw the post-colonial Françafrique system, with its preparations of affect and safety, markets, supplies, muscle tissues… and cash.
From the early years after World Battle II – when Africa had been a middle of activism in favor of post-war French chief Charles de Gaulle – Africa and its former French colonies had been a supply of funding for all French political events. When Bourgi got here on the scene within the Nineteen Eighties, it was routine.
Bourgi says he by no means imported the baggage of money himself.
“The process was easy. As elections approached, Chirac made it clear that I needed to ship a message in a number of African capitals,” he stated in an interview in Le Figaro newspaper this week.
“The (African) heads of state then despatched an envoy with a big amount of cash to my workplace in Paris. A number of hundreds of thousands in francs or {dollars}.”
In every of the 1995 and 2002 presidential elections – each gained by Chirac – about $10 million was given by African leaders, he stated.
The 2002 race supplied one other colourful story for Bourgi, when a consultant of Burkinabe chief Blaise Compaoré arrived in Paris with a big sum of cash hidden in djembe drums.
In accordance with Bourgi, he accompanied the envoy to the Elysée Palace, the place they have been greeted by Chirac. They opened the sealed barrels with scissors, upon which a bathe of banknotes fell.
RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP
Burkina Faso officers denied the accusations surrounding Blaise Compaoré (R) and enormous sums of cash for Jacques Chirac (L)
“Typical Blaise,” Bourgi quotes Chirac. “He despatched us small denominations.” The cash was apparently all in fives and tens.
Dealing with money wasn’t all the time straightforward. Bourgi remembers a big donation to Chirac from one other African chief, saying: “The cash arrived in Puma sports activities baggage. I wished to wrap the wads in paper, so I went into my daughter’s room, took one among her posters and wrapped the cash in it.
Robert Bourgi
Bourgi (C) right here with Blaise Compaoré from Burkina Faso (R) and an Ivorian official
The system was so widespread that it gave rise to a verb reward voucher – from the French reward, means a present.
When Bourgi’s allegations first got here to gentle in 2011, they have been denied by officers in Burkina Faso and elsewhere, though a former presidential adviser in Ivory Coast admitted they have been “historic practices.”
Jacques Chirac and his then chief of employees Dominique de Villepin additionally strongly denied Bourgi’s claims.
A preliminary investigation was opened, however was later dropped with out additional motion as a result of the funds had been thought-about too way back.
For African leaders on the time, Bourgi says, it was regular, and so they did it amongst themselves. Giving massive sums of cash was a solution to achieve belief and help.
However in a altering world it was unsustainable and Bourgi says he grew to become disillusioned. Nicolas Sarkozy got here to energy in 2007 promising to not take a single franc from Africa, and Bourgi says he has stored his phrase.
Sarkozy has since been investigated for allegedly taking marketing campaign cash from Libyan chief Muammar Gaddafi, which he denies. Bourgi, a Sarkozy loyalist, says he doesn’t imagine the accusations.
The previous lawyer, now 79 years outdated, additionally displays on his fairly completely different function in one other election – that of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. That was the second when Bourgi helped scale back the possibilities of the person who was for a time the runaway favourite , the conservative François Fillon. .
As soon as near Fillon, Bourgi had change into estranged: he accused the previous prime minister of being impolite and stingy. So he introduced to a journalist that he had given Fillon two very costly fits as a present.
Fillon campaigned on a message of honesty and by no means recovered from that. He was later convicted of giving his British spouse a faux parliamentary job.
However Africa is Bourgi’s love.
He displays that though the corruption on the coronary heart of Françafrique was flawed, the system on the time introduced stability and an typically private bond between French and African leaders.
At this time that has disappeared.
France has a deteriorating picture in its former colonies and its affect is waning. Witness the latest withdrawal from former military bases in Mali and Niger.
“I observe with unhappiness the breakdown of French relations with the continent,” says Bourgi.
“However it’s too straightforward to place all of the blame on Françafrique… Africa is globalized. France has not been in a position to adapt to this new truth. And it all the time makes the identical mistake: conceitedness.”
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