By Jon Henley
GuardianDecember 22, 2000
Jean-Christophe, the elder son and close adviser of the late French president, Franí§ois Mitterrand, was arrested yesterday and detained for questioning on suspicion of involvement in alleged illegal arms sales to Angola. Mr Mitterrand, who was his father's African strategy analyst from 1986 to 1992, was being held in the headquarters of the Paris financial crime squad with a noted writer, Paul-Loup Sulitzer, judicial sources said.
The two men were arrested after police seized computer discs that linked them to Pierre Falcone, a businessman currently under investigation for tax fraud involving tens of millions of dollars of allegedly unauthorised arms sales to Angola in 1993.
The scandal has also dragged in Jacques Attali, another former Mitterrand adviser and head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, who was recently questioned by police, and a former interior minister, Charles Pasqua, whose offices were searched.
Mr Mitterrand, now a businessman and consultant, and Mr Sulitzer have admitted receiving large sums of cash from Mr Falcone's company, Brenco International, but have denied the money was ever linked to any fraudulent dealings. A former director of the state arms export company Sofremi, Bernard Poussier, is also under investigation.
All are suspected of playing a role in Brenco's sale, in the early 1990s, of well over $500m (£315m at the time) of arms, helicopters and MiG jet fighters to the Angolan government, then fighting a vicious war with Unita rebels. Police believe several other arms sales, particularly to the Congo, may have taken place. Under French law, such a private sale has to be approved by parliament.
Franí§ois Mitterrand served two presidential terms from 1981 until 1995, before dying of cancer in 1996. Jean-Christophe, 54, started as an Africa correspondent for the French news agency AFP, but moved to the Elysée palace in 1982 and headed its secretive and controversial "Africa cell" from 1986 to 1992. Dubbed by his opponents "Papa-m'a-dit" (Daddy told me), he was criticised for mixing business and politics, travelling frequently to Africa and maintaining privileged relations with African heads of state such as Omar Bongo, the president of Gabon, where he was at one stage involved with a large mining company.
