‘Angolagate’ puts French elite in the dock

France's murky political establishment is steeling itself for a court case due to start next Monday in Paris concerning the illegal sale of arms to the government of Angola during the 1990s. The so-called 'Angolagate' hearing is guaranteed to be one of France's most explosive political trials of recent times.

The 486-page indictment seen by The First Post reads like a pastiche of exotic adventurism, implicating high-ranking members of the French establishment, shadowy east European arms dealers, African strong-men and - lingering in the background - the implicit prize of Angola's vast reserves of crude oil.

The case has already drawn comparisons with France's notorious Elf-Aquitaine affair in 2003. That scandal exposed the parallel diplomacy conducted by a powerful and secretive network of Franco-African elites, mired in corruption and petrodollars.

Members of the establishment involved in Angolagate include Jean-Christophe Mitterrand (pictured on previous page), eldest son of the former president, former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, former Minister of Cooperation for Development Michel Roussin, the Israeli politician Arkadi Gaydamak, whose son Alexandre owns Portsmouth FC, and, last but not least, Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

The plot revolves around Dos Santos, whose 29-year rule as potentate of Angola has made him one of the richest men in Africa.

In the early 1990s Dos Santos was fighting a two-decades-old civil war with Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. With the latter amply lubricated with dollars obtained through the sale of 'blood diamonds', and vast swathes of the country under UNITA control, Dos Santos was badly in need of arms and cash.

Enter Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, Africa advisor to the Elysee and nicknamed 'papa-m'a-dit' ('daddy told me') because of his frequent references to his father.

French diplomacy at the time prohibited any arms sales to a country at war. So, according to the court indictment, a parallel diplomacy arose, with Mitterand, who enjoyed close relations with several ruling African families, introducing Dos Santos (left) to a French businessman named Pierre Falcone. At the time Falcone was simultaneously working as a 'key advisor' to Sofremi, the government defence export agency controlled by the French Interior Ministry, then headed by Pasqua, and running a private company called Brenco.

Pasqua, according to UK-based transparency activists Global Witness, sensed this was a moment to head off US dominance of Angola's rapidly growing oil sector.

According to the indictment, in 1993, just as the balance of war in Angola was tilting irreversibly in UNITA's favour, Dos Santos bought $47m worth of arms from Brenco via a Slovak company for which Arcadi Gaydamak was a signatory. The following year Falcone and Gaydamak signed another deal worth $463m - delivering Russian-made tanks, rockets and helicopters according to French press - using Angola's future oil revenues as collateral.

At the core of the French investigation is the allegation that the finance for this and subsequent arms deals was raised illicitly through French agencies such as Sofremi. The investigating magistrate, Philippe Courroye, examined claims that the 1993 arms purchases were disguised as police and security equipment, which would have been exempt from UN and French arms embargoes.

The indictment alleges that Brenco's advisors would then come to Paris where they received envelopes filled with money - a stash of which was kept in the basement of the company's office on Avenue Kleber in the plush 16th arrondissement. Thanks to a fastidious company secretary, when French police raided the premises they found memos detailing the payments and the recipients' initials.

Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, who admits to receiving $1.8m from Brenco but says the payments were legitimate, is one of 42 defendants facing charges of illegal arms trading, fraud and corruption after nearly a decade of legal wranglings to bring the case to court. One man who won't be there is Gaydamak: he left France for Israel in 2000, partly to escape the charges, and is not expected to return.

The French arrest warrant hanging over his head makes Gaydamak a controversial figure internationally. Last week, the English Premier League was forced to deny suggestions emanating from Israel that it is in fact Arkadi who owns the Israeli football team Beitar Jerusalem, and not his son Alexandre, who effectively controls Portsmouth FC. The issue is important because league rules say that only "a fit and proper person" can be a club owner. According to Newsweek, Gaydamak's enemies paint him as an "awkward tycoon", desperate to buy friends and build a political power base.

Soon after the arrest of Mitterrand in December 2000, Le Monde published an editorial stating: "Africa is seen from France as a judicial no-man's-land which, in the name of mutual political interests, was to stay for eternity as a land of unpunished crimes." Reformists within the Elysee hope Angolagate will change that. ·