Justice Under Siege

by EvaJoly (Author)

New
Hardcover
2006
$25.15

This work takes you on a journey into the world of the global financial mafia. For six long years, the French judge, Eva Joly, investigated the financial scandal of the state-owned petrol giant, Elf Acquitane. Close to two billion pounds had been siphoned off to pay for luxurious lifestyles and bribes. To her great surprise, Eva Joly was systematically hindered in her quest: she received regular death threats, her private and public telephones were illegally tapped, her home and offices burgled several times. For her courage and steadfastness, Madame Joly paid a high price: four policemen had to guard her life around the clock for the six-year duration of the investigation. 'I had no idea of the extent of the corruption,' she says. 'I'd assumed that people in general respected the laws. But reality outstripped fiction. There was an ocean of fraud at the highest level. Every day I found something new.'

Synopsis

This work takes you on a journey into the world of the global financial mafia. For six long years, the French judge, Eva Joly, investigated the financial scandal of the state-owned petrol giant, Elf Acquitane. Close to two billion pounds had been siphoned off to pay for luxurious lifestyles and bribes. To her great surprise, Eva Joly was systematically hindered in her quest: she received regular death threats, her private and public telephones were illegally tapped, her home and offices burgled several times. For her courage and steadfastness, Madame Joly paid a high price: four policemen had to guard her life around the clock for the six-year duration of the investigation. 'I had no idea of the extent of the corruption,' she says. 'I'd assumed that people in general respected the laws. But reality outstripped fiction. There was an ocean of fraud at the highest level. Every day I found something new.'

$25.15

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Publisher: Arcadia Books
Published: 02 Sep 2006
ISBN 10: 1905147465
ISBN 13: 9781905147465

Media Reviews

One of France's most powerful and, in some spheres, most feared figures . . . Vanguard of a new generation of lawyers bent on exposing the corrupt practices that were part and parcel of the French political system. --James Coomarasamy, BBC News

Author Bio

Eva Joly was born in Norway and went to Paris as an au pair at the age of 20. She took evening classes and by 37 she had completed a doctorate in law. Aged 50, Joly moved to the Palais de Justice in Paris as an investigating magistrate. In the spring of 1994, one of France's most flamboyant public figures was the first to get a taste of Madame Joly's judicial nouvelle cuisine. She investigated Bernard Tapie, owner of the hugely popular Marseilles football club and President Mitterrand's minister of urban affairs - and found a tax evader up to his elbows in fraud. But the Elf case did not become sensational until Joly zeroed in on Roland Dumas, former foreign minister under Mitterand. She learned of a GBP 1 million luxury apartment and a GBP 4,300 monthly expense budget allotted to Dumas's mistress Christine Deviers-Joncour, who had been put on the Elf payroll for unspecified duties. She locked up Deviers-Joncour, called Dumas in for questioning and personally presided over a search of his Parisian apartment. Eva Joly now lives in Oslo.