French weekly magazines review 15 June 2014

French weeklies pile pressure on ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy amid growing allegations about his suspected involvement in the Bygmalion and Qatargate scandals.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is Marianne’s man of the week, a “repeat offender” if we go by the caption of the cover page story in the wake of new revelations about the so-called Bygmalion election funding scandal.

Bygmalion is an events-PR company, whose boss confessed on television that the 10 million euros fraudulently billed as UMP party expenses actually went to fund Sarkozy’s 2012 re-election bid. The company was pressured to falsify the bills or risk not getting paid, according to its lawyer.

The opposition UMP party had to organize a national drive last year, after election auditors ordered it to repay the 11 million euros it had been advanced as election funds, for exceeding campaign spending limits. In the wake of the revelations, Marianne says that everything was being done to mislead public opinion from the very start adding that the noose is tightening around the neck of the ex-President and his inner circle.

Le Canard Enchaîné also examines the ravages of the Bygmalion affair, after UMP chiefs picked a troika of ex-premiers to replace UMP chief Jean-François Copé, discredited by the scam. The triumvirate will run the affairs of the party up until a congress in November. The satirical weekly claims that by opting for interim UMP leaders, Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to use the crisis as a stepping stone to take over the party has been foiled, reducing his chances of a political comeback.

Le Point reveals the acts of "vengeance, purges and group therapy" taking place within the UMP party in the wake of the damaging revelations. The weekly sheds light on a mysterious secret armistice signed by Nicolas Sarkoy and his erstwhile arch enemy Dominique de Villepin, which is raising eyebrows within party circles. It also presents a string of 40 years olds determined to break with the past and snatch the party from the fangs of the so-called Tontons Flingueurs or Crooks in Clover.

Le Figaro Magazine believes the three musketeer solution is just a smokescreen to a pathetic spectacle adding that it simply gives breathing space to the big shots to fine-tune their battle plans. The right-wing weekly notes that since the outbreak of the Bygmalion scandal, the UMP party faithful no longer consider Nicolas Sarkozy as the hero they have been waiting for.

Talking about heroes, Le Nouvel Observateur says the hour has come to take off the from the French football icon Michel Platini reportedly caught up by the Qatargate scandal. This is in the wake of accusations by the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph that Platini allowed himself to be corrupted by Qatar and voted in favour of the emirate during the bidding process to pick the host of the 2022 football World Cup.

Platini admits that 10 days before the vote he accepted an invitation from President Sarkozy to attended a meeting at the Elysée with Qatar’s Crown Prince Sheikh Tamim Al-Thani. Le Nouvel Observateur reports that the UEFA chief says he wasn’t informed of the Qatari leader’s presence at the meeting but admitted that Sarkozy formally asked him to vote for Qatar which he did. For the left-leaning publication, Platini operates on a terrain where money and influence peddling are just as important as love for the game

In its special supplement on the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil, L’Express publishes an investigative report about the forgotten Cariocas of the bonanza taking place in Brazil. The right-wing magazine dispatched reporters to the hilly "favelas" or slumps of the old capital Rio de Janeiro and reports that the minds of the voiceless living there are no where close to the World Cup, distracted by the burdens of everyday life and run-ins with the police.

L’Express found out that millions of children growing up in the slumps are excluded from social programs launched during President Lula’s rule, adding that half of 40 million Brazilian children in school are unlikely to complete their education because of poverty.