French MFA whistle-blower has a new idea to fix democracy
French media has bestowed on me the label “The whistle-blower that accuses Nathalie Loiseau (MEP).” I’ll say just enough about that, and then turn to the big item: a lead to overcome democratic fatigue. Here it is in a nutshell. Her long prestigious career in hindsight, Eva Joly speaks of a “long but necessary struggle against corruption”. My expertise may be a fraction of hers, still, I’ve done some crosschecking using overlooked but authoritative sources, and found a critical blind-spot.
My story
My ordeal began in 2008, with a merit based appointment in Western Africa as a MFA agent of 8 years. For raising concern about shoddy accounting in the attribution of grants under my responsibility, I came under moral harassment at the embassy.
The terms of the prosecutor in my 2015 criminal (adhesion) proceedings, to qualify the 2010 attack committed by my office-mate, a very well connected native of the host country, are ‘homicide attempt’. I was left with PTSD, she kept her job. The MFA justifies it as a reason of state. My lawyer failed to submit critical documents in the criminal proceedings, in line with well documented, yet little publicized, mores. The appeal is pending.
Repatriated against my will, I faced professional sidelining, triggering a cascade of mental health crises, and was terminated in 2018. In parallel, the MFA pushed-back against my 2013 demand for statutory protection for civil servants. It was then Nathalie Loiseau, the person in charge, now the voice of president Emmanuel Macron at the European Parliament. A grueling legal battle followed, ending in 2021 with my vindication (on paper, I haven’t seen the first penny yet) for that particular aspect.
In 2019, the newspaper founded by Jean-Paul Sartre, Libération, published a fact-check of my story arguing that “no court decision will qualify her as a victim since each woman accuses the other of being at the origin of the aggression.” My rebuttal has been widely disseminated.
Whistle-blower protection has been a hot legislative topic in the EU/France in the last few years. I reached out to several parties to express my concern about the ombudsman, that it whitewashed the MFA in the context of 5 requests for whistle-blower protection, beginning in 2012. The new bill transposing EU law, sponsored by MP Sylvain Waserman, grants it new powers. In 2020, the same daily newspaper that I cited, published a Soviet-style portrait of the outgoing ombudsman, Jacques Toubon. He just published a book titled “Human rights are in danger”…
For more information, check my Wiki.
“Sarkozy’s sentence proves impunity is behind us”
ICRICT stands for Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation. It counts Eva Joly as a key member. Just recently, it made a proposal for a “feminist tax paradigm”.
Before I dive in, an aside on feminism & me. I said my ordeal began in 2008, but I could go back to 1996, when I received a compensation package for sexual harassment, from a utility company that not too long ago made headlines for malignant human resources practices. Contrary to the newspaper of record (“a landmark case”), I don’t think suspended sentences do justice to fellow victims of moral harassment in the workplace.
Back to the main issue: I skimmed over ICRIT’s proposal, and it looks like fresh paint on an old formula (“Stop the secrecy surrounding offshore wealth”). Further, it fails to expose the blind-spot motivating this article: a rigged court system. It is as if the magistracy, understood as the institution that prosecutes crime and arbitrates disputes, were to the study of government, what money is to the dominant economic paradigm since WWII: neutral (this analogy came to mind realizing that Joseph Stiglitz also sits on ICRITS). Have a look at « An obstacle named Jacques Toubon » (at once Libération’s darling and my nemesis, together with Nathalie Loiseau), and ponder the validity of that assumption.
His entire life, the French citizen is told: “when a politician is sentenced, it’s good/bad for democracy” depending on whether Eva Joly (in other words, a judge) or a politician is speaking. But sentences tend to be a weapon in the short term for the party in power, and in the long term a smokescreen, as they rarely carry through to judgments of last resort or enforcement. A judicial saga can last 20 years, a golden goose for investigative journalism. The outcome is a deep state that destroys jobs, small businesses, and the environment, and wreaks havoc in the third world.
The Elf affair that made Eva Joly iconic is at the intersection of Françafrique and the oil business. Its coming out of the shadows was by accident, and that is typical. A pair of investigative journalists wrote in a book on corruption since De Gaulle: “justice wasn’t very curious” (an opinion once echoed by one maverick judge, an extinct species). Yet, Eva Joly recently claimed it was an exemplary trial that proved justice was up to the job. As if reciting catechism, one of the two investigative journalists in question said on public broadcast: “in its majority, the political class is honest”.
On the Carlton affair implicating an international figure, a prolific former lawyer turned academic argued that it was choreographed (“courts are about the law, not morality”). That should have caught #MeToo’s attention; it hasn’t. The author in question refuses to compromise on truth in public, and therefore stays in the shadows. He was attacked in court for his work, by a corporation regarded by a Princeton scholar specializing in the French elite, as a state within the state. He ultimately won, oddly enough without having submitted an answer! The lawyers who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the said corporation pass as star human rights lawyers (they are behind a supposedly landmark ECHR ruling): rigged courts wouldn’t exist without conniving journalism.
According to Eva Joly, the sentence pronounced by a lower court against former president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2021, proves the days of impunity are behind us, literally. For those unsure what to believe, his fate post presidential election is a must-watch. Already, a hint: contrary to what the New York Times let believe, he didn’t get Jail sentence, but a suspended jail sentence (and vacationed in Greece).
In the interim, one can update his prior with these recent developments:
In 2022, the inquiry commission on a denial of justice surrounding the “killing” of Sarah Halimi (the judgment’s qualification) to the chant of Allah Akbar “ended with a report in denial”, in fact reproves this kind of parliamentary oversight!
Sits on the French equivalent of the US Supreme Court, the Constitutional Council, a former defendant in a blood transfusion scandal (a meme was born: “responsible but not guilty”), and a politician whose 2017 presidential bid elicited this title: “How far from a [suspended] prison sentence to running for French president?” Also, his name has come up in the Rwandan genocide. In 2000, a third one resigned following allegations of corruption in the (already cited) Elf affair and election rigging (“to save France from the right right”, he bragged on TV), prior to and in that capacity, respectively. In 2021, the newspaper of record confirmed the second allegation. Concern has been raised more recently, over the nomination to this office, of the chief of staff of the ministry of justice, for allegedly covering up a case of embezzlement by the head of the National Assembly (lower house of parliament).
“France is not Chaos”
In 2020, Deutsche Welle didn’t take peace in France for granted, for having to turn to my nemesis, Nathalie Loiseau, for confirmation. The Red Caps (2014), the Yellow Vests (2018–2019), and the ZADists (1968–2018), have in common low intensity warfare, and the state backing off. But that hasn’t disturbed institutionalized deception towards the masses. Faced with “no crisis should go to waste”, “alternative democracy” already looks hackneyed. Thus the aim of my activism: moving past stalemate, or, in the words of France’s “in-dirigible” prosecutor (check his genealogy), “outgrowing one’s sucker condition.” The method: exposing the law of silence using a concept championed by Julian Assange, scientific journalism, albeit focused on pedagogy rather than technology.
Miscellaneous
Where this article links to a book or a podcast, the relevant excerpts are in my Wiki under bibliography.
