Thousands in Brussels protest violence against women

Yahoo – AFP, 24 November 2019

Protesters placed red shoes on the ground as a symbol of the victims of
violence against women

Around 10,000 people took part in a protest march in Brussels on Sunday calling for an end to violence against women, police said, a day after similar demonstrations in France and Italy.

The protesters in the Belgian capital paid homage to women killed by partners or ex-partners, then marched to the Palace of Justice where they placed pairs of red shoes as a symbol of femicide victims.

"Belgium is a very complex country with many levels of power; federal, regional and communal and all these levels of powers do little things to tackle violence against women. But the main thing we are demanding is a national plan," said Celine Caudron, one of the organisers of the protest.

"It is important to punish the perpetrators but what we want most is that the violence doesn't happen in the first place."

The marchers held up placards bearing messages such as "That's enough" and "Not one more life".

Also prominent were the names of the 22 women killed by men in Belgium this year.

Outside the law courts building the demonstrators set off alarms and made noise as a "protest against the silence" which surrounds the deaths of battered women.

According to Mirabal, a Belgium umbrella group of organisation opposing violence against women, there have been 98 femicides in the country since 2017, a figure "which, in proportion to the population, is well above the average for European nations".

Tens of thousands marched in France and Italy on Saturday calling for an end to violence against women.

The marches came ahead of the UN-recognised International day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Monday.

Dutch court won’t send back British drugs trafficker, citing prison conditions

DutchNews, May 10, 2019

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Dutch judges have refused to extradite a British drugs smuggler to the UK because of their concerns about the state of a British jail. 

The man, who had been living in Spain, was the subject of a European arrest warrant issued in Liverpool in 2017 on charges of trafficking heroin and cocaine, and was picked up in the Netherlands. 

The court in Amsterdam said in its ruling it would suspend the extradition pending further information about the prison in Liverpool, which, according to a 2017 report, had some of the ‘most disturbing conditions’ ever seen by prison inspectors. 

This, the court said, led to its decision to suspend the extradition because there is a ‘real risk’ the man would be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment if returned to the UK. 

The British prisons ministry said in a statement to the court: ‘We do not accept that conditions anywhere in our prisons amount to inhuman or degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 ECHR.’ 

In addition, the statement said that major improvements had been made to conditions at the prison, and two others cited in the report in Bedford and Birmingham. 

In 2017, a Dutch court has refused to extradite eight suspects facing drugs charges in Belgium to the Belgian authorities, saying it needed more information about prison conditions there. 

The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture said a month before the case was heard that conditions in Belgium’s prisons were the worst it had seen in Europe, particularly in terms of overcrowding.

Pope Francis issues sweeping sex abuse legislation

DW, 29 March 2019

At the Vatican, Pope Francis has issued wide-ranging new sex abuse legislation that covers all Vatican personnel as well as those who work for the Vatican diplomatic corps. It aims to be a model for the church globally.

   

Pope Francis issued sweeping new sex abuse legislation on Friday for Vatican personnel and diplomats that requires the immediate reporting of abuse allegations to Vatican prosecutors.

For the first time, the law provides an explicit Vatican definition for "vulnerable people," who are entitled to the same protections as minors under church law.

The Vatican amended its canon law covering sex abuse to include "vulnerable adults" in 2010, but never defined it.

It is a policy shift aimed at being a model for the Catholic Church around the world.

While limited in scope, the mandatory reporting provision marks the first time the Vatican has put into law requirements for Catholic officials to report allegations of sex crimes to police or face fines and possible jail time.

Vatican City State

Francis also issued child protection guidelines for Vatican City State and its youth seminary. The move comes after the global sex abuse scandal exploded anew last year, and The Associated Press reported that the headquarters of the Catholic Church had no policy to protect children from predator priests.

While the new legislation only covers Vatican City State, affiliated institutions and the diplomatic corps, they were still symbolically significant and were welcomed by a former seminarian whose case helped spark the reform.

"I see this as something positive," Kamil Jarzembowski told the AP.

Vatican's new definition

According to the new definition from the Vatican, a vulnerable person is anyone who is sick or suffering from a physical or psychiatric deficiency, who isn't able to exercise personal freedom even on occasion and has a limited capacity to understand or resist the crime.

The new legislation applies to all who work in the Vatican

The new law covers all personnel who live and work in the Vatican as well as the Holy See's vast diplomatic corps.

The issue of whether adult seminarians, religious sisters or other adults who are emotionally or financially dependent on clergy can be considered "vulnerable people" has come to the fore in the wake of the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a once high-ranking American cleric accused of molesting seminarians, and revelations of priests and bishops sexually preying on nuns.

Vatican ambassadors have figured in some of the most scandalous cases of sex abuse in recent years, with papal representatives accused of groping, distributing child pornography and sexually abusing minors in their far-flung posts.

Current law

The law currently requires any Vatican public official who learns of an allegation of abuse to report it to Vatican prosecutors "without delay." Failure to do so can result in a fine of up to 5,000 euros ($5,615) or, in the case of a Vatican gendarme, up to six months of prison.

The mandatory reporting provision, however, is significant, since the Holy See for decades has justified not having a binding reporting policy for the universal church by arguing that accused clergy could be unfairly persecuted in places where Catholics are a threatened minority. Since that is not a risk in the Vatican, it is now law.

"With this document the Vatican wants to send a message that it takes these crimes seriously, wants to prosecute them, to avoid cover up, and also to create an atmosphere that prevents these crimes from happening in the first place," said Ulrich Rhode, a canon law professor at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University.

The legislation requires that victims be welcomed, listened to and provided with medical, psychological and legal assistance, and sets the statute of limitations at 20 years past the victim's 18th birthday.

In a statement accompanying the new law, the Vatican's editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, said while very few children actually live in the Vatican City State, Francis decided to make the legislation and accompanying guidelines a model.

Dutch police launch investigation after tribunal suspect takes poison and dies

DutchNews, November 29, 2017

Photo: UNtv screen shot

Dutch police have begun an investigation into how a defendant on trial at the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague managed to take poison and kill himself after hearing the verdict. 

Slobodan Praljak, 72, died in hospital, after swallowing liquid from a small bottle after hearing his 20-year jail term for war crimes had been upheld. 

The ex-commander of Bosnian Croat forces, who took the poison in full view of the cameras, said he was not a criminal before drinking from the bottle. As the judge continued reading, he then said: ‘I have taken poison.’ 

In 2013, Praljak had been sentenced for crimes in the city of Mostar during the Bosnian war from 1992-95. 

How Praljak obtained the poison is so far a mystery.  Praljak has been held at a special unit in Scheveningen for tribunal suspects and is allowed free access to visitors and his legal team, broadcaster NOS said. 

Visitors have to go through security checks similar to those at an airport. Visitors to the court itself have to go through a similar security procedure. 

Smuggling

A Serbian lawyer who has represented suspects at the tribunal told news agency AP that it would be easy to smuggle in a liquid. ‘They check you for metal objects. Pills or small amounts of liquid would not be discovered,’ he said. 

Wednesday’s session was the final one to be held at the court since it was established by the United Nations in 1993, two years after the end of the war. 

Dutch justice minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus told reporters later that he did not think the Netherlands’ reputation as host of the tribunal had been damaged by Wednesday’s shock death. ‘The Netherlands has always had a very good reputation and has acquitted itself well,’ he said. 

The court room has now been declared a crime scene. Dutch lawyer Erik Kok, who worked at the tribunal from 2006 to 2011, told RTL Nieuws it is strange that Praljak took his own life now. 

Although he had been sentenced to 20 years in jail, most people are released after serving two-third of their sentence. Given that he had already been in jail for 13 years ahead of the trial, he would have been released in the very near future, Kok said.

'They're our neighbours': Hometown of Spain attack suspects in shock

Yahoo – AFP, Alfons LUNA, August 19, 2017

Catalan police officers detain a handcuffed suspect in Ripoll during a search
 linked to the deadly terror attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of
Cambrils (AFP Photo/PAU BARRENA)

Ripoll (Spain) (AFP) - In the Spanish border town of Ripoll, everyone knows each other -- making it all the more shocking to residents that jihadists believed responsible for this week's deadly twin attacks lived among them.

"You are neighbours your entire life and they end up doing this," said Maria, a waitress in the town of around 10,000 inhabitants, who declined to give her full name.

The attackers killed 14 people and left 120 others wounded, using vehicles to mow down pedestrians in Barcelona on Thursday and in the nearby Catalan seaside resort of Cambrils early Friday.

At least seven of the 12 suspects grew up or lived in Ripoll.

Most were children of Moroccan immigrants, including Ripoll-born Moussa Oukabir, 17, one of five "suspected terrorists" shot dead after the Cambrils attack.

Likewise, his neighbour Mohamed Hychami, 24, and 18-year-old Said Aallaa, who were also in the car turned into a deadly weapon, called Ripoll home.

At least three of four other suspects detained were also inhabitants of the little town that attracts skiers en route to the Pyrenees mountains bordering France.

And on Saturday, officers raided the apartment of an imam in Ripoll, Abdelbaki Es Satty, according to his flatmate who gave his name only as Nourddem.

"The last time I saw him was Tuesday and he told me that he was going to see his wife in Morocco," Nourddem told AFP.

But Spanish daily El Pais, quoting police sources, said the imam may have been one of those killed in an explosion in a house in Alcanar, some 200 kilometres south of Barcelona, where the alleged jihadists were believed to have been building bombs.

'They came in for a beer'

Everywhere across town, the dismay that one of their own had carried out the deadliest attack in Spain since 2004 was palpable.

Stunned locals looked on as heavily armed officers raided several homes on Friday, including one next to the central Plaza Grande square filled with cafe terraces.

A waiter at one of the cafes told AFP he had served beers to the suspects numerous times, most recently just two days ago.

"They came to have beer at another bar in the square where I used to work. Two days ago they came, two of them and a child. They had a Heineken, a cafe au lait and the child had a juice," said the waiter, who declined to give his name.

A Catalan police officer holds a bag in Ripoll after carrying out a search linked 

to Spain's deadly terror attacks (AFP Photo/PAU BARRENA)

The suspects behaved normally, and gave no reason to be watchful of them, he added.

"Of course it is surprising," a customer of one of the bars, Alberto Batlle, told AFP of the attacks.

"You usually see these things on television happening in other countries and you always believe it will continue to happen to others. And it really affects you, when it happens in Barcelona and it is the work of people from Ripoll."

Yasmila, the neighbour of one of the alleged jihadists, also said that the suspect Said Aallaa was a hardworking and good youth.

"A friend apparently called him on Thursday at 3pm and he went out for a drive," she said, recalling the event two hours before the Barcelona attack.

Signs of radicalisation?

But other locals say there had been visible signs that some in the local Muslim community may have become more radicalised, with some becoming less social.

The opening of a mosque in 2008 prompted controversy in a town that is home to a monastery dating back to the year 888, according to media reports, while more recently a local newspaper column had urged authorities to "check the speech of some imams who were preaching during Ramadan".

Ripoll Mayor Jordi Munell angrily rejected this, saying that if someone saw something suspect, they must tell authorities.

"Today, for example, a person told me that one of (the suspects) had written a radical message on social media. That's true, four years ago! And never again," he said.

"When it's happened, it's very easy to say 'I knew it'."

That's exactly what a man of around 60 said.

"Those who know these north Africans are not surprised," he told AFP.

"You can't say that, they're not all the same," was the retort of a woman who lived next door to Moussa Oukabir.

She added that Moussa's older brother, Driss -- arrested on Thursday -- was a "very well-raised boy".

He told officers that his identity papers, which had been used to rent the van that ploughed into pedestrians in Barcelona, had been stolen by Moussa, according to police sources.

La comunitat islàmica es manifesta a #Ripoll pic.twitter.com/kujb8IDsOE

— Corisa (@CorisaMediaGrup) August 19, 2017

Turkey's Erdogan declares state of emergency after coup attempt

Yahoo – AFP, 20 Jul 2016

Pro-Erdogan supporters wave Turkish national flags during a rally at
Taksim square in Istanbul on July 18, 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey in order to hunt down all those deemed to be behind an attempted coup.

The state of emergency was needed "in order to remove swiftly all the elements of the terrorist organisation involved in the coup attempt," he said at the presidential palace in Ankara.

Turkey has accused the group of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen of being behind the coup and acting as a terror group. Gulen vehemently denies the charge.

"The decision has been made to declare the state of emergency for a period of three months," he said at a news conference.

He said the state of emergency is a measure "against the terror threat facing our country".

The announcement followed long meetings of Turkey's national security council and cabinet chaired by Erdogan at the presidential palace.

Erdogan vowed that democracy would not be compromised in Turkey.

"We have never made compromises on democracy. And we will never make" them, Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara.

EU critical of Turkey's post-coup crackdown

European leaders have reacted with alarm to Turkey's purges following the weekend's failed coup attempt. European leaders caution that the rule of law must be respected as the number detained exceeds 9,000.

Deutsche Welle, 18 Jul 2016

European leaders said Monday that Turkey's widespread crackdowns on police, the judiciary and the military are increasingly alarming and threaten stability and EU-Turkey relations.

"We are the ones saying today rule of law has to be protected in the country," the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in Brussels. "There is no excuse for any steps that take the country away from that."

We call for an end to use of violence. Societal tensions can only be addressed through democratic processes #Turkey https://t.co/TUfQxCiTUn

— Federica Mogherini (@FedericaMog) July 16, 2016

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has doubled down with vows that the "cleansing" of state institutions will continue as around 9,000 people were arrested, and the military announced the formal end of the failed coup.

Alarm in Germany and beyond

In Germany, Norbert Röttgen, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member and chair of the foreign relations committee of the Bundestag, says there is evidence that Erdogan is using the coup to make a power play to further exclude oppositional political forces.

"This is to say that President Erdogan would use this coup to consolidate his power mostly by eliminating constraints and the opposition," Röttgen said in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt.

Thousands of military officers and
rank-and-file soldiers whose loyalties are
 under suspicion are being rounded up
across Turkey

Senior figures within the center-right CDU - the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel - have become increasingly skeptical of Erdogan and question Ankara's reliability as a diplomatic and security partner. Rumblings are also being heard within the CDU's coalition partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Erdogan's talk of restoring capital punishment is also alarming diplomats in other European capitals.

"In a democracy, you cannot ignore the demands of people," Erdogan said Sunday evening, citing chants from supporters calling for the death penalty, which was formally abolished in 2004.

That would be unacceptable, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, a frequent Erdogan critic in Europe, told Austrian newspaper Kurier.

"The introduction of the death penalty would of course be absolutely unacceptable," Kurz said in remarks published Monday. "There must be no arbitrary purges, no criminal sanctions outside the framework of the rule of law and the justice system."

Restoring the death penalty would almost certainly scuttle Turkey's halting bid for EU accession, which was reactivated as part of a comprehensive deal for Turkey to contain mass migration from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere to the EU.

Settling old scores?

Arrests in Cankiri

Turkey has blamed the attempted coup on loyalists tied to US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile since 1999. Ankara has repeated demands that the US extradite Gulen but to date has not offered formal evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Some EU leaders are worried that Turkey could be using the unrest to settle old scores against Gulen, a former ally turned rival of Erdogan.

Johannes Hahn, the EU commissioner dealing with Turkey's membership bid, said that given the wide-ranging types of people under suspicion, a comprehensive dossier could only have been drawn up in advance.

"It looks at least as if something has been prepared," Hahn said Monday. "The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage."

Arrests in Izmir

Meanwhile in Istanbul, police commandos raided the prestigious air force military academy in search of new suspects, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Authorities have also detained General Mehmet Disli, who conducted the operation to capture Turkey's chief of staff Hulusi Akar during the stand-off.

Reports had said that a total of 36 generals had been detained so far. The private Turkish Dogan news agency reported Monday that 10 of them had now been remanded in custody by the courts.

The Turkish president has urged citizens to remain on the streets even after the defeat of the coup, in what the authorities describe as a "vigil" for democracy but witnesses describe as gatherings mainly made up of supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) co-founded by Erdogan.

jar/kms (AFP, Reuters, dpa)

Related Article:

US invitesTurkey to present any Gulen coup evidence

Hundreds of children put to work as beggars; four gangs work in NL

DutchNews, June 22, 2016

Police outside the house in
Barcelona. Photo: OM

Dutch police have identified four criminal gangs who are putting Roma children on the streets to beg and steal in the Netherlands, the public prosecution department said in a statement on Wednesday. 

The Dutch probe is part of an international investigation into the exploitation of some 300 children by criminal gangs in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Spain, the department said. 

The children, ranging in age from eight to 16 – come from Bosnia, Croatia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, the NRC reports. According to police spokesman Arthur de Rijk, they have been lured away from poor families and taught to steal in groups. They are expected to ‘earn’ up to €1,000 a day, he told the paper. 

Raids

Some of the children were found in Spain last week and brought back to the Netherlands where they are now in the hands of social services. 

They were found in police raids in Barcelona, where six children, ranging in age from under one to 15, were found living in a filthy home with a 49-year-old man and a 46-year-old woman, said to be from eastern Europe. Four of the children were already on a Dutch watch list.

‘They had been put under the supervision of Dutch social services earlier and so we are responsible for them,’ a prosecution department spokeswoman said. Eight other Roma children who are known to the Dutch authorities are still missing. 

Amsterdam 

The children, put to work in groups, were stealing up to €1,000 a day, police said. The money was passed on to criminal families who spent it on fast cars, luxury homes and gambling, according to Dutch media reports. 

The investigation began a year ago after police noticed they had been repeatedly arresting the same children pick-pocketing at Amsterdam’s central station.

‘We started to look into where the children lived,’ Arthur de Rijk said. ‘Their parents never came to pick them up. It was always other family members but they never had ID. Something was not right.’ 

DNA

In one case, dna tests showed the woman who came to fetch two children was not their mother, as she claimed to be. Various children were placed in care but encouraged to run away by their ‘families’. 

The two adults arrested in Barcelona will be extradited to the Netherlands to face charges. Five of the children have been placed in a secure unit to stop them running away. A sixth remains in Spain where she has to serve a youth detention sentence.

Dutch MPs to call for better EU security service cooperation

DutchNews, March 29, 2016    

Photo: Sisyfus via Wikimedia

MPs will call on the government to press for better cooperation between Europe’s security services during Tuesday’s debate on the Brussels bombing, according to the Volkskrant. 

Justice minister Ard van der Steur, the paper says, will be given a rough ride by MPs during the debate. In particular, MPs want more information about last week’s revelations that one of the Brussels bombers had been sent to the Netherlands by Turkey. 

Van der Steur told MPs last week that Turkey had informed the Netherlands digitally that Ibrahim El Bakraoui was on a plane to Schiphol but did not alert the Dutch police. Opposition MPs have submitted 166 follow up questions, the Volkskrant says. 

MPs also want to know how the Netherlands, in its current role as EU president, plans to improve the exchange of information between security services.

‘We have to conclude that cooperation between European security services is failing on many fronts,’ Socialist Party leader Emile Roemer told the paper. 

In addition, opposition MPs and the ruling VVD are expected to demand the government beefs up investment in the police.

A memorial to the victims. Photo: Miguel Discart on Flickr

via Wikimedia Commons

Related Articles:

New York police, not FBI, gave Dutch Brussels bomber info: minister - New
Brussels death toll revised down as Dutch reveal pre-attack warning

FBI told Dutch about terror brothers before Brussels blasts

German parliament passes anti-doping law

German lawmakers have passed a law against doping, providing for jail terms for offending athletes. This came as the IAAF was set to decide whether to take action against the Russian federation over doping allegations.

Deutsche Welle, 13 Nov 2015

Chancellor Angela Merkel's grand coalition government used its large majority in the lower house, the Bundestag, to easily pass the law, which Justice Minister Heiko Maas described as "a declaration of war on cheaters."

Under the legislation, athletes found guilty of doping could face fines or prison terms of up to three years. Those involved in supplying athletes with performance-enhancing substances could face jail terms of up to 10 years.

Maas said the legislation, which was jointly drafted by the justice, interior and health ministries, would make German sports "cleaner, safer and more honest."

"This is a historic day in sports politics. Doping will become a case for the prosecutor's office," Maas said in a speech to the Bundestag. "In view of the current situation in Russia, the problem doesn't seem to be getting smaller, but seems to be growing," he said, referring to a damning report released by an independent commission appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) earlier this week.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, whose ministry is responsible for sports, said the law was meant "to deter and to help uncover criminal doping structures."

The German Olympic Sports Federation (DOSB) said it supported the legislation in principle, but also expressed concerns that it could undermine the efforts of sporting authorities to combat the problem. Speaking to SWR public radio, Maas rejected this, arguing that sports authorities alone had proven not to be a strong enough deterrent.

The bill still has to be passed by the Bundesrat, the upper house, before it can come into force; however, this is regarded as a formality.

IAAF conference call on Russia

Meanwhile, elected members of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) were to hold a conference call later on Friday to discuss whether to suspend the Russian federation over allegations of state-sponsored doping of its athletes. The allegations came from the report released by the independent WADA commission on Monday.

pfd/es (SID, dpa)

Why France, pioneer against foreign bribery, has convicted zero firms

Yahoo – AFP, Eric Randolph, 12 Oct 2015

France has failed to convict a single company for corruption abroad since an

 international anti-bribery convention came into force 15 years ago, and some critics

say it is now time to American-ise the judicial system (AFP Photo/Patrick Kovarik)

Paris (AFP) - France has failed to convict a single company for corruption abroad since an international anti-bribery convention came into force 15 years ago. Some critics say it is now time to American-ise the judicial system.

Last year, French power company Alstom agreed to pay a huge $772-million (688-million-euro) fine for bribing officials all over the world, including in Egypt, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

But the record fine headed straight into the coffers of the United States Department of Justice, which carried out the prosecution.

In 2014, French power company Alstom

 agreed to pay a huge $772-million fine in

 the US for bribing officials all over the

 world, including in Egypt, Indonesia and

 Saudi Arabia (AFP Photo/Jean-Sebastien

 Evrard)

"It's humiliating for everyone in France that our judiciary is not capable of doing the work themselves," said Daniel Lebegue, president of the French arm of non-governmental anti-corruption group Transparency International.

France pushed hard for the 1999 convention against foreign bribery at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but Paris has been consistently criticised in its reports ever since.

Only seven individuals have been convicted for minor infringements, with the biggest fine just 20,000 euros ($22,500).

The only French-led conviction against a whole company -- aerospace giant Safran -- was overturned on appeal in January.

"France was one of the pioneers of the anti-bribery convention when it was negotiated, it would therefore be logical to see more results in terms of convictions," was the diplomatic assessment of Patrick Moulette, the OECD's head of anti-corruption, in a recent interview with AFP.

A spokesman for the French justice ministry said there had been efforts to increase enforcement, with 24 cases opened for corruption abroad between 2012 and 2014, but did not comment on the lack of convictions.

'Lack of political will'

The only French-led conviction against 

a whole company -- aerospace giant 

Safran -- was overturned on appeal in

January (AFP Photo/Frank Perry)

Some say France just isn't trying hard enough.

"The law that France has in place is largely sufficient and in many ways better than other countries, including the US," said Severin Wirz of TRACE International, a US-based anti-corruption business association.

"The issue isn't so much the law as the lack of political will of the enforcement agencies, and the lack of financial resources, staff, experience and knowledge," he said.

But many point the finger at a critical missing instrument in France's judicial toolbox: US-style negotiated settlements.

Out-of-court settlements allow companies to accept fines and monitoring programmes to avoid the ruinous publicity and expenses of a trial.

Also known as "deferred prosecutions", settlements were invented for youth drug crimes in the 1970s in a bid to keep children out of prison.

Graphic on Transparency International's

 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index 

(AFP Photo)

They were recycled by US prosecutors in the 1990s to crack down on corruption without permanently destroying businesses by dragging them through the courts.

Major international prosecutions, including Alstom, have been settled in this way. Britain, Germany and Switzerland have also boosted their success rates against bribery by introducing settlements.

Transparency International recently called for France to do the same.

"Experience shows negotiated settlements are much faster, much simpler for the company and therefore much more effective," said Lebegue.

'Must change behaviour'

But the idea still sits uneasily with some Europeans, who fear settlements are a way for companies to buy their way out of trouble.

"Alstom may have been given huge fines, but the managers who should ultimately be held liable for the behaviour are still in their posts," said Laetitia Liebert of Sherpa, a Paris-based non-governmental organisation of lawyers that is studying how France should change its bribery laws.

"We are not against settlements in France, but we must be sure they change the behaviour of companies and lead to greater accountability. Otherwise, companies will just see them as a cost of doing business," she said.

Moulette, the OECD's anti-corruption chief, agreed that settlements "cannot be the answer to everything".

He said there were clear signs France was taking the challenge more seriously, appointing a national financial prosecutor last year, and launching further reforms this autumn.

In July, Finance Minister Michel Sapin vowed to replace the current anti-corruption body, which has minimal investigative powers, with something more aggressive.

France pushed hard for the 1999 convention against foreign bribery at the 

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, but Paris has been

consistently criticised in its reports ever since (AFP Photo/Eric Piermont)

It said this would include monitoring of companies "inspired by Anglo-Saxon procedures."

"We can only hope the new bodies are more active and efficient, with more specialisation, and the OECD stands ready to work with the French authorities to improve the law on foreign bribery," said Moulette.

"That was a big part of the problem in the past -- it's such a specific form of criminality you need the right type of resources and expertise, both in quality and in quantity."