Senegal and Congo deny Chirac bribes
2011-09-13 18:51
Dakar - Senegal and Congo-Brazzaville on Tuesday denied allegations made by an influential French political adviser that they paid large sums of money in cash to the French presidency.
Robert Bourgi, a long-time unofficial point man between France's Elysee palace and the regimes in former African colonies, has rocked French politics with a raft of allegations on illicit cash handouts.
Bourgi, insisting he was coming forward now because he wanted a "clean France", said he took part in kickback payments between 1995 and 2005 involving former president Jacques Chirac, potential presidential candidate Dominique de Villepin and even retired far-right icon Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Among the African officials alleged to have paid cash to the French presidency is Karim Wade - the son of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade - who denied the accusations and vowed to sue Bourgi for defamation.
"I vehemently deny these astonishing claims, which are nothing but a figment of his imagination," the president's son said in a statement issued late on Monday.
Karim Wade added that he had asked his lawyers to immediately lodge a complaint with the competent courts for slander and defamation.
Bourgi said in an interview to the Senegalese daily L'Observateur published on Monday that Karim Wade had "€760 000 to Villepin in front of me."
Villepin was then president Jacques Chirac's top aide.
Cash-stuffed briefcasesAmong the string of African leaders alleged by Bourgi to have come to Villepin's office with cash-stuffed briefcases is Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso.
"We reject with the utmost energy the allegations made by Mr Robert Bourgi," Congolese government spokesperson Bienvenu Okiemy told public radio on Tuesday.
"Some like to think of Africa as an entity still under influence, which takes its orders from abroad and occasionally opens its coffers to feed cherry-picked politicians abroad," he said.
Opposition figures in Congo-Brazzaville - which Sassou Nguesso has ruled for close to three decades - demanded a probe into Bourgi's accusations.
"I want the whole truth to come out. I want to know what these kickbacks were for, because national parliaments have no trace of the money that was paid," Jean-Claude Siapa Ivouloungou, a top opposition leader, told AFP.
Bourgi told a French radio on Monday he would estimate at around $20m what he personally handed to Chirac and Villepin in exchange for Paris turning a blind eye to autocratic rule and rights violations.
Burkina Faso has denied similar accusations while Gabon simply said it did not feel targeted by Bourgi's accusations involving long-time president Omar Bongo, the father of current leader Ali Bongo.
Mamadou Koulibaly, ousted Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo's former top aide and now the country's parliament speaker, expressed no such embarrassment.
"Robert Bourgi is perfectly right," he told AFP. "Around €3m brought from Abidjan to Paris in a suitcase" were used by Chirac for his 2002 re-election campaign.
- SAPA
