On the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day, the government announced that it was working on “new measures” to fight corruption. This is what the Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire said this Saturday on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
“Corruption is the worm that can rot the fruit of democracy. This is what undermines all confidence in our democratic institutions, in our businesses and in our daily relationships. It can sometimes facilitate criminal activities,” wrote the Bercy tenant.
Since the election of Emmanuel Macron as president in 2017, “we have strengthened our systems for preventing and detecting violations of integrity thanks to compliance programs conducted by the French Anti-Corruption Agency” (AFA), insisted the minister. “We want to continue in this direction. At the beginning of next year, we will have the opportunity to announce new measures on this subject” with the Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti and the Minister for Public Accounts Thomas Cazenave, he concluded.
Asked by AFP, Bruno Le Maire’s office indicated that it was working “on measures aimed at better preventing corruption in the business sector but also the public sector.” “This could, for example, involve strengthening AFA controls in certain sectors defined as sensitive, or raising our level of requirements in terms of breaches of probity by modifying the current legal arsenal,” he said. -we still detail at Bercy.
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In 2016, the so-called “Sapin 2” law notably created the Judicial Convention of Public Interest (CJIP), which allows companies suspected of violating integrity to escape criminal prosecution by paying a fine. In an interview with the newspaper Le Monde, the director of the AFA Isabelle Jégouzo stressed on Saturday that “since 2016, twenty CJIPs have been signed with the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office”.
Iconic companies like McDonald’s, Google or LVMH have thus been sanctioned, although these negotiated fines do not amount to either admission of guilt or conviction. “Until now, we have made little use of our sanctioning power,” said Isabelle Jégouzo. “But after seven years, we can estimate that the educational work has been amply done with large companies and that we can use this power of sanction,” she added.
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The director of the AFA also called for “going further on raising awareness among small and medium-sized businesses”, “not directly subject to the Sapin 2 law”. Finally, Isabelle Jégouzo wants to tackle “low intensity” corruption. This consists, for example, of paying “a few hundred or thousand euros” to a public official to consult confidential files, she illustrated. Since 2016, cases linked to this “low intensity” corruption have, according to her, “increased by 46%”.
In an online survey conducted at the end of October among 1,500 people and published on Saturday, 87% of respondents say they have the feeling that people exercising power or important responsibilities are corrupt, whether small (44%) or large (43%). ) part of them. In this Toluna/Harris Interactive survey carried out for the Jean Jaurès Foundation and the Transparency France movement, more than a quarter of French people (26%) say they have already personally been asked to give a sum of money or a valuable gift in a public administration to obtain a service”.
“The French are clear: they are asking for more,” comments Patrick Lefas, president of Transparency International France, quoted in a press release from the anti-corruption movement. “More exemplarity, more transparency in public life, more resources for financial justice and more whistleblowers,” he lists.
