France’s Mr Africa spills the beans on secret cash

It was January 1998 and Robert Bourgi was ready to see the Gabonese president Omar Bongo, in an antechamber at his seaside palace in Libreville.

He was there to gather funds for the approaching French presidential election on behalf of the centre-right Gaullist candidate Jacques Chirac, who was mayor of Paris on the time.

Who ought to then be ushered into the identical antechamber however Roland Dumas, former French overseas minister and right-hand man of ruling Socialist President François Mitterrand, Chirac’s arch-rival.

“Good day, Bourgi,” mentioned Dumas. “I consider we’re right here for a similar function.”

Claiming seniority, Dumas went into Bongo’s workplace first. Rising a short while later, he mentioned to Bourgi: “Don’t fear, there’s nonetheless a bit left!”

Recounted in Bourgi’s newly-published memoirs They know that I do know all of it – My life in Françafrique, the anecdote says every little thing in regards to the money-grabbing and mutual dependence that for therefore lengthy linked French and African politics.

For 4 a long time Robert Bourgi was on the centre of all of it.

Born in Senegal in 1945 to Lebanese Shiite dad and mom, he rose to grow to be a confidant of a era of African leaders – from Omar Bongo in Gabon to Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso.

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… and cash.

From the early years after World Warfare Two – throughout which it had been a centre of activism in favour of France’s post-war chief Charles de Gaulle – Africa and its former French colonies had been a supply of financing for all French political events. By the Nineteen Eighties, when Bourgi got here onto the scene, it was routine.

Bourgi says that he himself by no means imported the luggage of money.

“The process was easy. When there was an election approaching, Chirac made it clear that I ought to ship a message in numerous African capitals,” he mentioned in an interview in Le Figaro newspaper this week.

“The [African] heads of state then despatched an emissary to my workplace in Paris with a big sum. A number of million in francs or {dollars}.”

In every of the 1995 and 2002 presidential elections – each received by Chirac – he says round $10m (£7.5m) was given by African leaders.

The 2002 race offered Bourgi with one other vibrant story, when a consultant of Burkinabe chief Blaise Compaoré arrived in Paris with a big sum of cash hid in djembe drums.

In line with Bourgi, he accompanied the envoy to the Elysée Palace, the place they had been greeted by Chirac. They opened the sealed drums utilizing a pair of scissors, upon which a rain of banknotes fell out.

“Typical Blaise,” Bourgi quotes Chirac as saying. “He’s despatched us small denominations.” The cash was apparently all in fives and tens.

Dealing with the money was not all the time straightforward. Remembering a giant donation to Chirac from one other African chief, Bourgi says: “The cash arrived in Puma sports activities luggage. I needed to place the wads in paper so I went into my daughter’s room and took down one in all her posters, and wrapped the cash in that.”

The system was so widespread that it gave rise to a verb cadeauter – from the French cadeau, that means a gift.

When Bourgi’s allegations first surfaced in 2011 they had been denied by officers in Burkina Faso and elsewhere, though a former presidential adviser in Ivory Coast conceded they had been “historic apply”.

Jacques Chirac and his then chief of workers Dominique de Villepin additionally strenuously denied Bourgi’s claims.

A preliminary investigation was opened however 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, says Bourgi, it was regular, and so they did it amongst themselves. Giving giant sums of cash was a method of creating belief and help.

However in a altering world it was unsustainable and Bourgi says he grew disillusioned. Nicolas Sarkozy got here to energy in 2007 vowing to not take a single franc from Africa, and Bourgi says he saved to his phrase.

Sarkozy has since been positioned underneath investigation for allegedly taking marketing campaign funds from Libyan chief Muammar Gaddafi – which he denies. Bourgi, a Sarkozy loyalist, says he doesn’t consider the costs.

The previous lawyer, now aged 79, additionally displays on his slightly completely different position in one other election – that of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. That was when Bourgi helped scupper the probabilities of the person who was for a time the runaway favorite, the conservative François Fillon.

As soon as near Fillon, Bourgi had grow to be estranged: he accused the previous prime minister of being impolite and stingy. So he launched to a journalist the truth that he had made Fillon a present of two very costly fits.

Campaigning on a message of probity, Fillon by no means recovered. Later he was convicted of giving a faux parliamentary job to his British spouse.

However Africa is Bourgi’s love.

He displays that although the corruption on the coronary heart of Françafrique was improper, the system on the time introduced stability, and a bond – typically private – between French and African leaders.

Right now, that’s gone.

France has a worsening picture in its former colonies, and its affect is on the wane. Witness the current retreat from its former military bases in Mali and Niger.

“I word with unhappiness the disintegration of French relations with the continent,” Bourgi says.

“However it’s too straightforward to place all of the blame on Françafrique… Africa has globalised. France has been unable to adapt to this new reality. And it retains making the identical mistake: vanity.”