Father of France, mother of all expense accounts

Jacques Chirac

PARIS - The allure of royalty, it is said, comes from aloofness and enigma; the mist of mystique that swirls around it.

But no monarch beats the President of the French Republic when it comes to mist. Especially when money is involved.

After four years of detective work, a French lawmaker has exposed an extraordinary financial fog surrounding the Elysee Palace.

President Jacques Chirac's office, as gilt and gorgeous as any royal seat and with political powers that would be envied by Henry VIII, turns out to be a place where millions of euros mysteriously flow in and out. No one knows how much or where it goes.

When Chirac took office in 1995, he had an official budget of 5.21 million ($9.3 million). The proposed budget for 2006 is 32.7 million.

But, according to the diligent search of Socialist MP Rene Dosiere, this is just the tip of an iceberg. By making oral and written questions to almost every Government department and then piecing the results together, Dosiere believes the true cost of having Chirac as head of state is 82.6 million per year.

"The budget voted by Parliament is little more than a third of the real cost," says Dosiere. "But in spite of all my investigations, I still don't have all the figures."

How does Chirac rack up such a bill? Nearly 23 million is accounted for by the Defence Ministry, providing pilots, other military personnel and aircraft for ferrying the President around and protecting him.

In 2003, Chirac notched up 673 flight hours - an average of nearly 13 a week - drawing on a special fleet of two A319 Airbuses for long-haul flights and six Falcon 900 executive jets for flights within Europe.

Another 9 million of the Elysee's costs are paid by the Foreign Ministry for diplomatic trips by the President and staging lavish receptions for him at international conferences. More than 8 million comes from the Culture Ministry for maintaining the palace building and its art treasures.

Dosiere's figures have inspired unusual curiosity in the usually tame French press.

The daily Liberation discovered that wherever Chirac goes, a backup plane flies along in case the first breaks down.

Each hour of flight (fuel, meals, personnel costs included) costs between 5050 and 5750.

Thus, when Chirac's wife Bernadette once ordered one of the Falcons to fly from Noumea to pick her up in Tokyo to take her to New Caledonia, it cost the taxpayer a stinging 70,000.

No one knows the exact number of people who work for the Elysee but Dosiere calculates about a thousand.

This figure includes soldiers, guards, security personnel, administrators, drivers, gardeners, and a post office with 13 workers. Only 58 are on the presidency's payroll; the rest are paid by ministries.

Still unclear is the cost of maintaining secondary official residences of the French President, such as the chateaux of Rambouillet, Marigny, Souzy-la-Briche and the Fortress of Bregancon, and how much other property is used by the presidency.

Details as to how many cars are in the presidential fleet and how much is spent on flowers is also unknown.

As for Chirac's own pay cheque, that at least has become known and, on the face of it, the President is good value for money.

The Prime Minister's office, in reply to a written question, revealed for the first time that the head of state receives an annual pay packet of 79,133.70, or 6594 a month before tax and social deductions.

It is an almost pitiful sum for any head of state outside the poorest nations of Africa, and is dwarfed by the salary of the French Prime Minister (194,000) and even that of a junior minister (113,000).

Again, no one knows why this salary is so small or why it is the President who sets his own salary - the remuneration of all other government officials is determined by the National Assembly.

"It's tradition", was the only explanation given to investigators.