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French weekly magazines review 22 June 2014

The French weeklies have more shocking revelations about the Bygmalion election-funding scandal rocking France’s main opposition party and French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy. There’s also concern about Islamist advances in Iraq.

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The Bygmalion scandal is turning into an action-packed serial after the press exposed the sophisticated system put in place by the right-wing UMP party to falsify Sarkozy’s re-election campaign bills that went overboard by 17 million euros exceeding authorized ceilings.

The satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné says documents show that the PR events company belonging to cronies of the disgraced former UMP leader Jean-Francois Copé made an estimated 60 million euros between 2008 and 2013 mostly from dealings with the upper crust of the French right and CAC 40 business bosses but also the public broadcaster France Télévisions.

Le Canard says Bygmalion’s clients included the UMP parliamentary group for which the company produced gadgets and services at the cost of 5.5 million euros.

The problem, according to the paper, is that, despite Bygmalion’s ferocious appetite, it suffered losses of more than a million euros by the end of 2013 and Le Canard wonders whether the bills were falsified to help Sarkozy or for some other reason, such as financial gain.

Le Canard Enchaîné is also following another suspected scam, reporting that Corsican-African tycoon Michel Tomi has been summoned by judicial police investigating allegations of tax fraud and money-laundering against him. According to the publication, Tomi, who holds both French and Gabonese nationality and lives in Libreville, heads a large African casino empire employing more than 5,000 people and declared annual earnings of 250 million euros.

Le Canard reports that he is suspected of having fed, lodged, transported, treated and protected Mali’s newly-elected President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who in return has allowed him to open casinos and other businesses including possible military contracts with the government of the conflict-stricken country.

Marianne spotlights the new war in Iraqi which it claims is threatening the world, as Sunni-Muslim jihadists take their fight to install an Islamist state in Iraq and the Levant right to the gates of Baghdad. The left-leaning magazine points to an irony of history, the fact that the United States and Iran are on the verge of signing a pact to prevent the fall of the Iraqi capital.

Le Nouvel Observateur has a portrait of the man who has got the world trembling, the secretive and blood-thirsty leader of the insurgency Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi. The weekly quotes intelligence sources as saying that his arsenal includes 4,000 heavy machine guns and six Blackhawk combat helicopters which have helped his combatants capture one-third of Iraq including the country’s second city Mosul where he looted 430 million dollars in hard cash from the central bank.

Le Nouvel Observateur says his objective of defeating the Shia-Muslim regime in Baghdad and change the boundaries of the Middle East could lead a reshuffle of political cards in the conflict-stricken region.

Le Canard Enchaîné comments on the miraculous alliance of irreconcilable opponents it will take to stop the fall of Baghdad. It would have to include Iraq’s Shia premier Nuri

al-Maliki, whom Washington has branded a corrupt anti-Sunni sectarian, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the civil war against rebels some of whom are Al-Qaeda-backed and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, classified a terrorist organisation by Washington. It jokes about Saddam Hussein’s posthumous revenge, adding that funding by Saudi Arabia and Qatar of the jihadists demonstrates the extent of Washington’s flagrant failure with 200,000 Iraqis and 4,500 Americans killed and Iraq broken into three pieces.

L’Express is particularly preoccupied about the danger jihadists fighting in Iraq and Syria pose to France in the wake of reports that the number of recruits hailing from the country is progressing dangerously.

It reports that the government is about to harden French anti-terrorism legislation after intelligence services issued a red alert about the growing number of young jihadists including girls, recruited in France through internet, more than 12,000 overall from 80 countries worldwide.

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