Paper the politicians read in fear

February 15 is the day Herve Gaymard would rather forget. It should have been an ordinary Tuesday in the greyest month of the French year, a day for paperwork, committees, and meetings with minor dignitaries.

Instead, it was the day when the youthful, ambitious economy minister saw the ground open beneath his feet and swallow him whole.

What happened was something dreaded by public figures across France: a scoop by Le Canard Enchaine.

The satirical weekly reported that Gaymard was housing his wife, their eight children and a retinue of servants in a vast apartment in Paris' plush 8th arrondissement, all at eyewatering expense to the taxpayer.

The 600sq m, two-floor apartment cost 14,000 ($25,000) in monthly rent. Converting two flats owned by a big property company into one abode had cost another 31,000 ($56,000), a bill also met from the public purse.

The accusation would have caused a scandal in any country at a time of austerity. But especially so in France, given that Gaymard, 44, an aloof graduate of an elite school, had repeatedly told the public that it was time to get off the gravy train.

Gaymard fought back, pleaded media harassment, portrayed himself as the hard-working son of a cobbler, promised to pay back the money. Helped by a tightening of rules on grace-and-favour apartments, the protege of President Jacques Chirac appeared safe.

The following week, Le Canard fired its second salvo, revealing that the Gaymards, far from being short of accommodation of their own as the minister had claimed, owned an apartment of 235sq m on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, in the heart of the Latin Quarter. They had let it for 2300 ($41,000) a month to a friend, as they lived in the bigger apartment, at public expense, down the road.

Sensing blood, other publications took Le Canard's lead. It emerged that Gaymard also owned a holiday home in Brittany, another one in the Alps, two apartments in the mountain village of Bourg-St-Maurice and an office in his constituency of Albertville. His wealth was such that he had even paid a special "solidarity tax" on it.

That was it. Gaymard quit.

The episode was classic Canard, whose speciality is to prick the bladder of lies, fraud and pomposity with the needle of fact, with no allegiance to political party, media tycoon or advertiser.

By any modern standards, Le Canard is a strange bird indeed. It looks as if it was put together by high school students after a long night in the pub - a mazy mix of articles, some serious, others humorous, punning headlines, cartoons ... all in a hotchpotch of old-fashioned typefaces, crowned by a drawing of a duck wearing a hat and clutching a flower.

It comprises just eight pages and refuses ads, to maintain its independence.

Yet with weekly sales of around 400,000, which can double during a really juicy scandal, this slender publication is one of the best-read newspapers in France, and with annual profits of more than 4.5 million ($8.1 million) one of the few in the black.

Even the title - The Chained Duck - is wacky.

The paper was launched in 1916 at the height of World War I by a left-wing journalist, Maurice Marechal, who was sickened by the jingoism and authoritarianism of the time.

Marechal took the name canard from the slang word for a newspaper, and enchaine in a puckish reference to another newspaper that had changed its name from L'Homme Libre (The Free Man) to L'Homme Enchaine (The Shackled Man) to protest at censorship.

It cut its teeth reporting on the desertions among demoralised troops caught in the Western Front butchery - a report that helped usher in a more humanitarian military command and arguably hastened the end of the conflict.

Big scoops have included its disclosure in the 1970s that the then President, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, had received a gift of diamonds from the megalomaniac French-supported emperor of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bedel Bokassa. Giscard never lived this down.

Le Canard similarly wrecked the career of conservative premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas by publishing his income tax return, showing that he had paid barely a centime.

It did for the former mayor of Paris, Jean Tiberi, with a string of allegations about financial sleaze and cronyism.

When the car giant Peugeot was locked in pay talks, telling striking workers it could not afford more than a 1.5 per cent pay increase, Le Canard published the tax returns of Peugeot's boss, Jacques Calvet, which showed he had awarded himself a pay increase of 45.9 per cent over two years.

The weekly so infuriated the authorities that the domestic intelligence agency, the DST, once tried to bug it. The agents were disturbed by a Canard journalist late at night as they were wiring the office.

Le Canard named the 1973 scandal Watergaffe, a pun on Watergate and "gaffe", and installed a commemorative plaque above the hole in the wall that the DST operatives had drilled to install their microphones.

Many of Le Canard's sources are from within the inner circle of top bureaucrats and political aides who want to dish some juicy goss about a rival or their boss, or from journalists at other newspapers, frustrated at their editors' refusal to print salacious scuttlebutt.

The paper also does good work on the ground, sniffing out unexplored angles and verifying facts. It has never lost a libel suit.

"Le Canard plays an important role in France," says sociologist Jean-Marie Charon. "The press traditionally draws a veil over the private lives or spending habits of ministers and civil servants. This has given Le Canard its cherished place. It is seen as a bit of a moralising force and a counter-weight in public life."