For shame!

[Evianers]

Our local Maire, very personable and apparently thought to be an upright citizen until recently, has been caught having his inherited land rezoned from agricultural to urban constructible. Lots of lovely money in his pocket. But, the young man who works alongside him in the planning department, thought this certainly below board and so contacted the Sub-Prefect. Maire then becomes incenced, and fires the young man, who gets his own back by approaching the local newspapers. Quite what the outcome will be remains to be seen, as the Maire is about to retire [at 74] in any case. Seems there is a certain amount of corruption everywhere n'est pas?

[woolybanana]

Common around here, I'm afraid. Part of the landscape of government in France where enriching yourself is ok provided it it not too immodest.

[idun]

Really after all the Maires that ended up en tole in the Rhone Alpes a few years ago, you would have thought that he would have known better than do this. [:D]

[Catalpa]

And then there's the maire of le Mont-St-Michel whose self-serving and illegal opportunism reduced tourist numbers to le Mont... qualifies under Wooly's definition of immodest enrichment, I think.

[woolybanana]

Many of you will remember the frightening death toll during hurricaine Xynthia, after the digues broke and let the sea flood housing estates in both the Vendee and Charentes Maritime. Simply put, this housing had been built where it should never have been as the area was zoned as 'at risk' of flooding.

Behind all this were the maires of the respective communes involved, one of whom is up for manslaughter some time soon. Needless to say, they, their families and their cronies had done pretty well out of the original lotissement (and even got in on the act to demolish the illegal housing afterwards).

By the way, one of the causes of the high death toll was that the houses had all electric shutters on doors and windows which the occupants could not open to get out of the houses because the power was off, so, always have at least one exit which is opened manually.