French weekly magazines review

The French weeklies are dominated by graft scandals and the bombshell claim that African dictators bankrolled French politicians for years.

Le Point takes a close look at the whistleblower Robert Bourgi, who is a long-time adviser on African affairs to ex-president Jacques Chirac and the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Bourgi told the newspaper that he personally delivered nothing less than 15 million euros to Chirac between 1995 and 2007. The gifts were from four African leaders, Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire.

Le Point reports that the grenade has landed in the office of the state prosecutor in Paris who has opened an investigation. Sarkozy, it says, cannot avoid being bloodied in the mess, as public opinion puts him in the same basket as Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, who allegedly received the moneybags.

Le Canard Enchaîné says it’s still too early to say how long the list of super Bongo lottery winners will be. The weekly argues it is a sick joke to imagine that Bourgi stopped carrying FranceAfrique cases, as he claims, only when he started working for President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Le Nouvel Observateur looks at the manifestos of the six candidates vying to become the Socialist Party's flag-bearer in the 2012 presidential elections. L’Express argues in an editorial that voters are having great difficulty convincing themselves that all their politicians are not “rotten”.

L’Express profiles the so-called cumbersome friends of the French right. The magazine names Bourgi, alongside lobbyists Ziad Takieddine and Alexandre Djouhri who made billions through shady dealings and little services rendered to Chirac and Sarkozy. L’Express says Takieddine who was indicted last week for illegal campaign funding is threatening to destroy the government.

Le Nouvel Observateur looks at new explosive revelations by investigative journalist Pierre Péan about Djouhri’s rise from rags to riches, warning that the information could spark a fratricidal war within the French right. Djouhri told the author that he has them all "by the balls”. L’Express describes Takieddine and Djouhri as rivals who over 15 years, worked as intermediaries for France and the Kadhafi regime.

Le Nouvel Observateur counts the billions embezzled by Arab dictators. Arab world researcher Odile Benyahia–Kouider tells the magazine that some of the findings are embarrassing to some of the world’s most prominent banks and CAC-40 companies. Benyahia Kouider says all countries except France have declared 120 billion euros in frozen Libyan assets.

Tunisian dictator Ben Ali stole 3.6 billion euros as he fled to Saudi Arabia while Hosni Mubarak embezzled 50 billion euros during his 30-year rule.

Le Nouvel Observateur looks back at the love-hate relationship president Sarkozy had with the ousted Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi. They were intimate enemies says the magazine, their friendship marked by the release of the Bulgarian nurses , Kadhafi’s red carpet reception in Paris and the promises of golden contracts.

Le Nouvel Observateur says Sarkozy, on taking office in 2007, made the rapprochement with Colonel Kadhafi a personal and strategic affair, which is exactly what he has made of the war four years later.

Marianne says there is Islamist air blowing through the liberated country, since the fall of Kadhafi. The National Transitional Council, it recalls, has already announced that the institutions of the new state will be driven by Sharia law. Le Nouvel Observateur runs excerpts from a new book by French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu about the fall of the Arabs' “Berlin Wall” and the lessons to be learned from the revolution.

Le Nouvel Observateur also examines Greece’s dramatic plunge into bankruptcy. The magazine reports that austerity breeds recession and the economic lights have all turned deep red, with no one in Athens capable of determining where the tunnel ends.

L’Express argues that the economic crisis is fanned by the mediocrity of politicians. Marianne blames it all on the banks, which have kept making billions while dancing on a volcano, always interested in people’s money, which pays the fat salaries of their traders.