Political parties do get greedy and are caught spending more than these incredibly modest spending limits. There was the Affaire de la Sempap in the early 90s that involved about --15 million.
And in 2010 there was the Bettencourt-Woerth scandal, where the billionaire heir to the L'Orà ©al fortune said they gave envelopes of money to various politicians, including just replaced president Sarkozy, who unlike George W. Bush, is losing his immunity from prosecution and will likely be charged with fraud. Ditto Jacques Chirac, who lost his immunity when he stepped down as president, and was convicted (remember, these are presidents we are talking about!) for ghost jobs when he was mayor of Paris years ago.
But it is not all as rosy as all that. The French, being clever people and knowing that money is the milk of political success, are getting around these restrictions by creating microparties. A comparison to the United States would be the old PACs, before the Supremes unleashed the monster Super PACs on the land. In addition to the --4,600 limit citizens can donate directly to candidates, each citizen can give up to --7,500 per voting cycle to as many political parties as they want. And twenty years ago, there were about 20 parties. Today? Including all the microparties, there are now around 280!
So, the loophole is to simply establish political parties, usually a party around one politician or a local area in-country. Political parties can legally transfer funds among themselves in France. So, a wealthy donor can give many --7,500 donations to these microparties, knowing that they are aligned to their point of view and that likely, much of this money will end up transferred to the big party desired that is supporting their candidate for president.
The conservatives for sure and the socialists, less so, are sitting fat and happy over this debasement of the law, but the smaller parties are screaming bloody murder and the French people are upset by the system. Hollande got a majority of socialist/left wing seats during the legislative votes last month. Since this system is really helping the conservatives much more than the socialists, it will be interesting to see if Hollande's mandate can stand up to and resist the sweet fruit of bank accounts full of cash to do battle with their adversaries. Money as we know, and the power that comes with it, is intoxicating, even if you are less intoxicated than your enemy.
At the end of the day, especially now that the US has unfettered corporate and secret super PACs, the amounts of money we are talking about in France are chump change compared to the US's multi-billion dollar campaign colossuses.
And as everywhere else on Earth, the US, Japan and in all open democracies, France has its fair share of corruption, in the name of crony contracts and kickbacks. But unlike the United States since 2000, people do get caught and do go to jail. Reagan's administration was the most indicted, convicted and imprisoned in US history and some fish got grilled over the savings and loan corruption in the 1980s. But since then"there is an outside chance a crook may have to pay a token fine, while never having to admit guilt.
For the record, according to Transparency International, in 2011 France is rated #25 in overall corruption and the United States #24, no statistical difference (unfortunately, the US has been dropping rapidly on the world list since 2000). Clearly, corruption is a problem in both countries, but it seems remarkably absent in the election process in France.
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