French weekly magazines review 16 November 2014

The political earthquake caused by the “Jouyetgate” scandal is this week’s top story. Corruption claims hit one of Nicolas Sarkozy’s allies. And what did Hollande offer Compaoré?

The magazines are all commenting about the off-the-record remarks made by Elysée Chief of Staff Jean Pierre Jouyet about a request from ex-prime minister François Fillon to facilitate the prosecution of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy in a campaign-funding scandal.

Fillon, who expects to face Sarkozy in a bid to become the mainstream right’s presidential candidate in 2017, denies the allegations and has threatened to sue Jouyet.

Marianne says the whole affair has the smell of a morons’ conspiracy for which the two idiots are bound to pay a heavy political price. It claims that the French people are shocked and exasperated by the sequence of denials and counter-denials of what they said or didn’t say during a private lunch.

“Fillon in Agony” is the caption of Le Figaro Magazine’s cover story, with the weekly wondering aloud if he really was bent on eliminating Sarkozy and whether he has any chances to bounce back after the scandal. For the magazine, the poison of public falsehood weakens not only the opposition UMP but also the ruling Socialist Party and everyone seeking public office.

Le Point says the jibes and painful wounds inflicted in the long, contemptuous relationship between Sarkozy and his former prime minister won’t help restore public confidence in the political class.

Le Point says that before the outbreak of the affair, the Elysée secretary general was everybody’s friend as he was liked by everyone from the right -- where he served as European affairs minister under Sarkozy - and then on the left as a long-time friend to President François Hollande. That was surely the problem with him, concludes Le Point.

As Sarkozy tries to capitalise on a claim that he is being victimised, L’Obs breaks another story that is likely to keep him under pressure.

The left-leaning magazine reports that Patrick Balkany, the mayor of the Parisian suburb of Levallois, is suspected of amassing a huge fortune while serving as Sarkozy’s unofficial envoy to Africa.

L’Obs has laid its hands on a complaint that has been lodged with the French courts against Balkany by the Central African Republic, which accuses him of pocketing millions of euros in kickbacks from shady dealings carried out in the country.

Balkany has been indicted for money-laundering and tax evasion in France. The journal says he declared 143,000 euros in earnings in 2012 despite reportedly owning a four-hectare property in the Normandy village of Giverny and a 1,600-square-metre palace in the Morrocan city of Marrakesh.

L’Obs says it has been tracking down embarrassing witnesses and found one in London. It names him as Saifee Durbur, a 53-year-old Indian citizen who made his fortune in Africa. Durbar was a special adviser to ousted Central African leaders Ange Félix Patassé and François Bozizé according to L’Obs.

He is tired of being at in the line of fire in the inquiry into a uranium mine scam splashed on the front pages of the French media last spring, it reports. Durbur told l’Obs that shortly after the scandal broke in April he received a threatening phone call from Balkany asking him how his family was doing. Durbur says he expected to have to tell the French judge investigating the scam about his experiences and doesn’t understand why the summons to do so has been continuously postponed.

France’s role in the evacuation of its old Bukinabé friend Blaise Compaoré to Côte d’Ivoire after his overthrow is raising new questions over Paris’s resolve to end the Françafrique relationship.

L’Obs says it has learnt from a retired diplomat familiar with the African continent that Hollande would have offered Compaoré the post of Secretary General of the French-speaking nations club, la Francophonie, had he stepped down before being swept out of the presidential palace by the “brooms revolution”.