Lizzy Davies in Paris
February 6, 2009
ACCUSED of using his power to secure lucrative contracts with African dictators, France’s most popular politician and charismatic humanitarian activist has been forced to defend his reputation as a moral crusader.
Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister, is portrayed as a money-loving hypocrite whose business dealings between 2002 and 2007, while out of ministerial office, tarnish his reputation for ethical practice.
The thrust of the allegations made in a new book, The World According To K by the investigative journalist Pierre Pean, is that Mr Kouchner profited from an uncomfortable combination of public and private sector work, billing huge sums to the regimes of Gabon and Congo.
Capitalising on his political clout as the government-appointed head of a public health body operating in Africa, Mr Kouchner also worked as a policy consultant for two French firms that charged €4.6 million for his reports into national health insurance schemes.
Pean does not describe the activities as illegal but claims there was a clear conflict of interests. “[There is] a distortion between the general way in which he behaves and the image that the French people have of him,” he said. “That image is of a knight in shining armour fighting for morality …”
Mr Kouchner, the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres and a prized recruit of President Nicolas Sarkozy, has rejected the book as a “grotesque and sickening” attack motivated by jealousy from those who resent his success, and revenge from former Socialist allies who view him as a traitor.
In the weekly Nouvel Observateur, he denied having had direct financial dealings with President Omar Bongo of Gabon or President Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo. Defending his right to work in the private sector, he insisted it stopped as soon as he took up his new job.
Despite his characteristically vigorous denials, the allegations threaten his “whiter than white” reputation.
Some opposition politicians urged him to set out his defence publicly. “It seems to me problematic that a minister has received money from African heads of state with debatable human rights records,” said a Socialist deputy, Arnaud Montebourg. Bernard-Henri Levy, the philosopher, criticised the “little men” who attacked Mr Kouchner.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, February 6, 2009