French press review 12 April 2013

The tax fraud scandal concerning former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac is shaking France's Socialist government with critics accusing President François Hollande of not having done enough to find out the truth.

Le Figaro raises its eyebrows over the circumstances under which the inquiry into Cahuzac’s banks accounts was conducted. Its fire is now concentrated on Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici.

The weekly Valeurs Actuelles claimed Thursday that Moscovici knew his budget minister had a secret bank account abroad months before Cahuzac admitted to it. Moscovici says the allegations are false and is suing.

“Hollande proves unable to put out the Cahuzac fire,” headlines Le Figaro, following the president's unveiling proposals to restore morality in public life and reinforce transparency in the banking sector.

The right-wing paper says that the measures are encountering strong resistance, even within Hollande’s own camp, opponents of the reform rejecting what they describe as the “indecent” revelation of their wealth.

L’Humanité tells the hidden story of Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen’s enrichment. The Communist Party daily says that the far-right leader went from rags to riches in 1985 thanks to a will naming him as heir to Hubert Lambert, the last owner of the giant Lambert cement company.

The fortune is estimated at 6.5 million euros today  but the validity of the will  is still challenged by several Lambert relatives, according to the paper.

L’Humanité claims that the discovery of the Le Pen family fortune in a Swiss bank account exposes the true nature of the his daughter Marine Le Pen's claim to be interested in social issues.

“They are all liars, from Cahuzac to Gilles Bernheim,” shouts Aujourd’hui en France.

Bernheim is France’s Chief Rabbi. Libération explains that the leading Jewish religious figure resigned on Thursday, after admitting to plagiarism and lying about his academic record.

Le Monde says Hollande is right to try to increase transparency in public life and to restore an exemplary republic. According to the paper, critics who dismiss the reform as diversion, inquisition and improvisation have got it all wrong.

For Le Monde, people condemning the president should say what they really want.

Either they believe that the moral crisis exposed by the Cahuzac affair is serious and citizens’ distrust of elected officials is unbearable and act to extricate the cancer or, for whatever reason, simply abandon the drive to democratise France’s institutions.