Corruption is France's only stat-of-the-art industry. And Joly, an import, has been exposing it for a long time.
Integrity Award 2001 winnerEva Joly (France)
Eva Joly has been an investigating magistrate for seven years. A Norwegian by birth, she came to France three decades ago. Her legal career started in relative obscurity as an assistant to the public prosecutor in the provincial town of Orléans. After working for a time in the ministry of finance where she handled bankruptcies. Joly rejoined the magistrature, focusing on financial crime. Although her office was severely under-resourced, she started investigating high-profile cases such as the state-owned Crédit Lyonnais, which had incurred staggering losses of billions of dollars through mismanagement.
Eva Joly was propelled into the limelight by her seven-year investigation of the Elf Aquitaine oil company scandal, which involved corruption at the highest levels of business and political life in France. In the course of this and other high-profiled investigations, Joly has been subjected to intimidation and death threats and remains under constant police protection.
Joly is seen as the leader of a new breed of judges who have not been afraid of calling to account crooked businessmen and the French political elite. In a country where the lines between the judiciary and the executive have been traditionally blurred, her investigations into the affairs of highly influential politicians such as Roland Dumas and Bernard Tapie, have made her the champion of determined efforts to uphold judicial independence and uncover a system of pervasive corruption.
The belief that lack of transparency can destroy democracy has been a strong motivation in her investigative work. "If the citizens of this country are convinced that government contracts are not being awarded with the public interest in mind but rather to fill the secret bank accounts of the political elites or to maintain their networks, the confidence of voters will be destroyed for decades to come," she says.
Joly has investigated financial crime in France with unprecedented zeal, ending a tradition of not treating high-class financial wrongdoing as crimes at all. "The great fiscal frauds involved very powerful and respectable people who were convinced - and still are - that they are entitled to be above the law. Someone robs a petrol station and he is pursued methodically," says Joly. "The culprit is caught, his home searched and he is sentenced to 10 years. But when the head of an organisation steals 100 million, justice surrounds itself with precautionary luxuries…prolonged preliminary inquiries, interviews and interminable strings of experts." Joly has been committed to speeding up the process. In the past five years, she has dealt with 200 separate cases.
Transparency International presents its Integrity Award to Eva Joly in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the fight against corruption in France and the example she has set for other members of the judiciary in her country and elsewhere, as well as her courage in the face of personal danger.