France: adoption of a bill to redistribute money from ill-gotten goods
This photo taken in February 2012 on Avenue Foch in Paris shows a truck at the entrance to the Parisian residence of the son of Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang.
AFP Photo / Eric Feferberg
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
This bill, adopted on Tuesday, July 20, 2021, plans to return to despoiled populations the money embezzled by heads of state and their relatives who are facing legal proceedings in France.
The sums donated, often several million euros, will finance development actions.
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The restitution
of ill-gotten goods
will take time, it is now possible.
Indeed, for French justice to be able to confiscate private mansions in the heart of Paris, villas on the Côte d'Azur, or even luxury cars, the person convicted of public money laundering must first have exhausted all its remedies up to the appeal in Cassation.
This can last for several years.
Once the properties are sold, the sums collected will be transferred to the French Development Agency (AFD) which will redistribute the money to NGOs which have applied, supported by projects.
For example,
the assets of the vice-president of Equatorial Guinea
, Teodorin Obiang, whose trial is ongoing, are estimated at 150 million euros.
Enough to vaccinate the population of his country three times against Covid-19.
An important figure when we know that health expenditure for Equatorial Guinea in 2017 was 63.2 million euros, which represents barely 50 euros per capita.
Among the countries which could see, in the years to come, significant sums returned, there is for example Tunisia, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville.
And new cases are accumulating since recently a complaint was filed by the Sherpa association
against Riad Salamé
, the governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon.
So many potentially considerable sums which should ultimately be returned to the despoiled populations.
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