A lobbyist has detailed the seamy underside of France’s privileged post-colonial relationship with African nations known as “Francafrique”, claiming Parisian politics were long fuelled by bags stuffed with sub-Saharan cash.The late Jacques Chirac’s 1995 presidential election victory was boosted by “at least $10 million” from the leaders of Congo, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), Robert Bourgi alleges in newly-published interview book “Ils savent que je sais tout” (“They know I know everything”).His allegations extend to the Socialists, the former rivals of Chirac’s conservative RPR before the collapse of France’s major parties in the 2010s.Bourgi claims he met Roland Dumas, a two-time foreign minister, in the waiting room of Gabonese leader Omar Bongo ahead of the 1988 election that returned Socialist president Francois Mitterrand for a second term.”Bongo was fuelling the Socialist Party too,” Bourgi says, betting “on every horse to be sure of backing the winner”.The Gabonese leader did the same in 1995, betting both on Chirac and his conservative rival Edouard Balladur.Chirac enjoyed another wave of African largesse ahead of the 2002 election, with contributions from Gabon, Congo and Senegal amounting to almost $10 million, Bourgi claims.Four Djembe drums containing $3 million from Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaore arrived at the Elysee presidential palace, Bourgi alleges, while the same amount came from Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo in “Puma-branded bags”.”Chirac loved cash, no matter where it came from. He was irresistibly drawn to money,” Bourgi says.By contrast, his successor Nicolas Sarkozy — embroiled to this day in allegations of illegal campaign financing from Libya’s Moamer Kadhafi — “never got African money”, the lobbyist claims.Bourgi, a lawyer by training, says he was paid by African leaders to “act as an intermediary” with Paris.They invested huge sums in the relationship as a “pure quid-pro-quo. France remained very influential in Africa” at the time, he added.Bourgi claims he himself “never” touched any of the money.”I saw it above all as support for my political family,” the conservative RPR, he told his interviewer.Bourgi made many of the same allegations in the press in 2011, at the time of an investigation into African leaders’ “ill-gotten gains” stashed in France.Chirac sued him for defamation at the time but abandoned the suit in 2013.
