Tag Archives: Sherpa

The French Anticorruption Strategy, Falling Short of Expectations

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GAB welcomes this Guest Post by Sophie Lemaître, a French lawyer, anticorruption advocate, and creator of the first French-language podcast on corruption & tax evasion. Her 2025 book, Réduire au silence, documenting efforts around the world to intimidate journalists and human rights defenders, was awarded the Renaud Van Ruymbeke Prize, which recognizes works dedicated to the fight against corruption.

In November last year, the French anti-corruption Agency (Agence française anticorruption – AFA) finally published France’s Multi-Year National Plan to Fight Corruption for 2025-2029. The French anti-corruption community had long waited for it: the country had not had any anti-corruption strategy since 2022.

The 2025-2029 national plan is the second of its kind. It is 52 pages long in French (48 pages in English) organized around 4 pillars:

  1. Bolstering the fight against bribery and corruption in central government departments
  2. Helping local authorities to fight corruption
  3. Protecting economic stakeholders against corruption
  4. Combating corruption at international level

Priorities I and IV are further divided by objectives, and all four list specific measures to be taken, a total of 36 that include targeting central government, government departments, local authorities, the private sector, and France’s international actions.

The strategy reflects some of the challenges France is facing. It puts strong emphasis on the links between corruption, organized crime, and drug trafficking, the latter the focus of the central government. The plan also includes measures that have been requested for years, the creation of an interministerial committee to prevent and fight corruption, the authorization for the National Commission for Control of Electoral Accounts and Political Finance (CNCCFP) to receive financial intelligence from Tracfin, the French Financial Intelligence Unit, and the appointment of an anticorruption coordinator reporting to the general secretary in each ministry.

The strategy sets a clear direction and, at first glance, appears fit for purpose. However, it suffers from several shortcomings. Transparency International France has even published an alternative strategy with 19 measures to rise to the challenge.

Five weaknesses I have identified:

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Guest Post: The Obiang Trial Suggests Innovative Approaches To Fighting International Corruption

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GAB is pleased to welcome back Frederick Davis, a lawyer in the Paris office of Debevoise & Plimpton, who contributes the following guest post:

Over the past two months, the French Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris (the principal trial court) heard evidence in the case against Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (known as Teodorin), on charges of corruption and money laundering, among other allegations. Teodorin is the son of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the long-time – and notoriously corrupt – President of Equatorial Guinea, a resource-rich country that also has some of the most widespread poverty in the world. Yet Teodorin, who is currently Vice President , owns vast real estate in Paris, a private jet, a yacht, and a fleet of vintage and modern automobiles, among his other known assets. This case has been discussed extensively on this blog (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), but it’s useful to recap how the case came to trial in the first place:

The case against Teodorin was primarily the result of diligent efforts by NGOs, including the French anticorruption group Sherpa and the French chapter of Transparency International (TI). In 2007, Sherpa and others filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor in Paris alleging that the ruling families of Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Burkina Faso and the Republic of the Congo held assets in France that were not the fruits of their official salaries. After a brief investigation, the Public Prosecutor dismissed the claims. Several of the NGOs, joined in some instances by citizens of the countries in question, then used a French procedure known as constitution de partie civile to cause a criminal investigation by an investigating magistrate (juge d’instruction). This effort was opposed by the Public Prosecutor. A Court of Appeals initially upheld the prosecutor’s position and dismissed TI’s intervention, but in an important 2010 ruling, the French Cour de Cassation (Supreme Court) ruled that TI was a proper partie civile authorized to instigate the criminal investigation. Ultimately Teodorin was bound over for trial, now with the support of the Public Prosecutor (as well as the continued active participation of TI and other NGOs). A decision is expected in October.

The procedures that brought Obiang to trial are interesting because they highlight four important differences between French and US criminal procedures, and more generally illustrate several legal deficiencies, in countries like the United States, that often hinder the worldwide fight against transnational corruption: Continue reading →