€150m of hidden spending revealed
Maths teacher finds details of secret cash fund that allowed MPs and senators to fund pet political projects
DETAILS of a hidden €150million cash reserve that MPs and senators can use to fund pet projects have been uncovered by a Lot-et-Garonne maths teacher who worked for two years to show that “ordinary citizens can act for democracy”.
Hervé Lebreton managed to get the Interior Ministry to reveal details of how the €150m réserve parlementaire was spent in 2011 – with projects varying from a salle des fêtes in Meaux to the doors of a Corsican church and including a total of 51 lawnmowers, 17 photocopy machines, nine boulodromes and, from François Hollande, a slide for a swimming pool in Corrèze.
The 1,000-page document includes details of how the 925 MPs and senators distributed the fund that was for “general interest projects” but was claimed not to exist and which seems to have had no real legal basis. It was a custom that started in the parliamentary finance committee, who originally controlled the entire sum.
By 2011 it was spread among all parliamentarians, but not equally. Bernard Accoyer, UMP president of the National Assembly had access to the largest sum, €11.9m, while the lowest amount went to Nord MP Sébastien Huyghe with €1,319. In general, the ruling UMP party got the lion’s share of the funds with an average €191,000 at their disposal while Socialist members had €39,000.
The funds were spent on a range of projects with 90% of the cash going to local authorities and 10% to associations and foundations.
Of the politicians who were also mayors, more than half of them used part of the money to finance projects within their own community with Gilles Carrez, the president of the finance committee, using the whole €3.85m at his disposal for 51 projects in his town of Perreux-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne).
Since the election of the new government, each parliamentarian has access to the same sum – around €130,000 – and Assembly president Claude Bartolone has said that details of spending should be published.
You can find details of how your community or department benefited from the spending on the Rue89 news website - just one of many where similar lists were published – but which is easy to understand... www.rue89.com
