The corruption machine (continued)

So, the French Republic reward a big corrupter. In principle, the Department of Justice could issue an arrest warrant on him, since he acts on French territory. “When it is real big, the law of silence is applied… Can you really imagine a French policeman starting an investigation against Akram Ojjeh?” said, smiling, the specialist of corruption for the Prosecutor of Paris.

It is not easy to investigate in an area where reality is bluff. “Would looking be really useful?” asks one commentator. “Impossible to do otherwise” said another one. “In those countries it is different. A backhander is not considered as corruption.” Some rare informed people accept to reveal something, but anonymously: “Corruption is just a “fact”. It is recognized by the Administration. It is considered to be indispensable to get major markets since everybody does it. Amounts vary according to the type of products.” For this senior civil servant of the DREE (Direction for External Economical Relationship – under Ministry of Trade and Industry – which is mainly acting to back up French companies so they can export), bribes are not worth a discussion.

They are as normal as Christmas in December. This senior civil servant even gave the names of the big distributors of “commissions”: Bouygues, Spie-Batignolles, Alsthom, CGE, Thomson, Doumenc, etc., etc. Doing a fast calculation, he stated: “In the civil sector, corruption mainly concerns equipment and food industries. Which makes about 100 billion francs a year. If “bribes” are about 10%, they amount to 10 billion francs.”