The Elf network of kickbacks became pervasive, a secret glue uniting French and Germans, politicians and business tycoons, communists and capitalists. Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, is the latest European politician to be hit by the falling debris of the Elf scandal.
Corruption makes strange bedfellows.
Here was French President Francois Mitterrand, a socialist, allegedly ordering Elf to buy the refinery to assist his friend Kohl, a conservative. The ancient refinery was duly acquired for a price as much as three times its true worth, and a shadowy network of operatives began packaging the payoffs with a financial finesse worthy of Goldman Sachs. Guelfi passed the money along to two more dummy companies, Showfast Ltd. and Stand-By Establishment. The German payoffs are just the latest example of how Elf worked. We know these details of Elf's activities only because of the courageous crusade of a French magistrate named Eva Joly, who has been trying to unravel the company's accounts since 1995.