The same for ailing firms. Managers from failing companies have the political connections needed to attract government support for their firms. Such money would be more useful it it was used to develop more promising industries (but startup managers are not yet affluent, so they lack the political connections that they will have when they will not need them anymore => When their firm will have succeeded) or if it was not used at all (with lower taxes for everyone).

Even more so, it leads to bad habits (see the relapse of the British government with the BAE Al Yamanah contract in Saudi Arabia) such as corruption.

Anyway, given the state of mind of French top-executives obsessed with state-sponsored contracts, I am not at all surprised by these Kosovo developments. And as you can see from recent political developments, I am not really optimistic for the future.

I totally agree with your perception of Bernard Kouchner…
Maybe we could have a chat together if you see an interest in my blog: http://mitterrand.2007.over-blog.com/
Kind regards,
Tonton

In the major Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter we have recently been reading investigative reports by Maciej Zaremba (probably Sweden’s most well known and respected investigative journalist) on how the UN has acted in Kosovo. Since Mr. Kouchner for a while was the UN’s High Representative in Kosovo he is to a large extent responsible for the development there. And the UN has failed miserably according to the articles in Dagens Nyheter. Corruption has been widespread, especially so among some companies from presumably less corrupt countries, as the UK and Iceland. After countless billions of EUROS there is almost nothing to show for it in Kosovo, except for fancy cars driven by foreigners and brothels visited by the same foreigners.

Mr. Zaremba shows how the French government saw Kosovo as a chance for French companies to make money. Below follows my quick and imperfect translation of a part of Mr. Zaremba’s text; the quotes within the text are from Mr. Zaremba.

“As soon as it becomes clear during the summer of 1999 that the UN will intervene in Kosovo and that a French minister (Bernard Kouchner) shall lead that intervention, the government creates a special committee, Mission interministérielle pour lEurope du Sud-Est (Miese). The mission: to prevent a repetition of Bosnia. That time France supplied 17 percent of the aid but only 5 percent came back in the form of orders to French companies. This time the currents should be reversed.

The committee makes clear that France will ‘give with one hand and take back with the other’. But they are pressed for time; they have to arrive first at this ‘bingo market’ where ‘everything can be sold at a higher price because of the need’. With government blessing large French companies are allowed to dress up their reserve officers as Kfor soldiers, with the intent of claiming territory and making ‘informal contacts’. The aim is to create goodwill and therefore ‘one must not hesitate to once in a while give a humanitarian hand’. (Yes, this is what it says. Sometimes the French language contains an enviable clarity.)”

It is unfortunate that Mr. Kouchner, who has contributed so much to the world through Médecins sans frontiers, did not mind leading such a despicable task as profiting from the people of Kosovo in their hour of need.

Kind regards,
Mats Walus

A link to the page in Dagens Nyheter (the text is in Swedish): http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?a=660203