The Economist (20140315) by calibre

Author:calibre [calibre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: news, The Economist
Publisher: calibre
Published: 2014-03-13T18:47:51.246000+00:00

French politics

A scandal tainting both sides

Nicolas Sarkozy’s political comeback is endangered

Mar 15th 2014 | PARIS | From the print edition

EVERY now and then, a politico-judicial tangle emerges in France that draws in politicians from across the party divide. Such seems to be the case with the unprecedented wiretapping affair concerning Nicolas Sarkozy, the former centre-right president. On March 7th Le Monde, a newspaper, revealed that investigating judges started to bug Mr Sarkozy’s telephone last year. Having denied any knowledge of this, the Socialist government of François Hollande, the current president, now admits that it was in fact recently informed.

This is the first time that a former president of the Fifth Republic has had his phone tapped in connection with a criminal case. Investigating judges, who enjoy sweeping powers under French law, began to bug Mr Sarkozy’s phone in September 2013. At first, this was part of an investigation into alleged illegal financing by the former Libyan regime of his election campaign in 2007. While listening in, according to Le Monde, they were alerted to a different matter: an alleged attempt to exchange inside information from a high-ranking prosecutor about ongoing judicial investigations in return for securing him a plum job in Monaco.

Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer, Thierry Herzog, whose conversations with his client were recorded, has called the wiretapping “monstrous”, breaking attorney-client privilege. He denied any attempt to exchange favours for information, and called the allegations “absurd”. The whole case, he said, was clearly “political”. Mr Sarkozy’s immunity from prosecution expired upon leaving office in 2012, and since then he has been linked to a number of legal cases. In one, centred on alleged illegal party-financing by a billionaire heiress, he was detained for hours by investigating judges, who in the end dropped the case against him. This latest affair emerged shortly before elections to local councils this month and to the European Parliament in May—and just as Mr Sarkozy had begun a return to public life, with an eye to a possible comeback in the presidential election in 2017.

The wiretapping revelations came days after it emerged that one of Mr Sarkozy’s former presidential advisers, Patrick Buisson, had also been secretly taping hundreds of hours of conversations. A former editor of a far-right newspaper, Mr Buisson would hide a recording device in his pocket and used the tapes, his lawyer said, as an aide mémoire. So far, the published transcripts range from the banal to the politically crushing. In one, Mr Sarkozy jokes to his wife, Carla Bruni, that he “became rich by getting married”. In another, he calls the idea of appointing Jean-Louis Borloo, considered at the time a possible prime minister, “grotesque”. But further revelations could be more compromising. Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer is now seeking an injunction to secure the removal of transcripts published online.

The Buisson bugging affair, at least so far, is merely an embarrassment—although it does raise questions about Mr Sarkozy’s judgment in hiring the adviser. The fallout from the wiretapping case, however, could be wider. Not only

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