Epilogue en catimini pour l’affaire Tomi

L’homme d’affaires corse Michel Tomi a été condamné à un an de prison avec sursis lors d’une comparution avec reconnaissance préalable de culpabilité.

Après l’assassinat, en décembre 2017 à l’aéroport de Bastia, de deux figures du banditisme corse proche de l’homme d’affaires Michel Tomi, les auteurs présumés du double meurtre s’inquiétaient d’une chose : la réaction de Michel Tomi. « Tomi va payer 2 milliards pour nos têtes, frère ! », disait l’un d’eux sur des échanges téléphoniques récupérés par les policiers, soulignant en quelques mots l’importance de cet homme dans l’imaginaire insulaire.

Un an après, cette richissime figure de la Françafrique, dont même les avocats prononcent le nom tout bas, a fait, vendredi 21 décembre, une apparition discrète au tribunal de grande instance de Paris pour mettre un point final à une enquête judiciaire qui a cherché en vain à le mettre en cause pour ses activités en Afrique de l’Ouest, où il a fait fortune dans les jeux et l’immobilier.

Tout de noir vêtu, assis dans un fauteuil roulant à cause d’une sclérose en plaques, Michel Tomi, 71 ans, plaisante dans les couloirs du tribunal. Autour de lui, ses conseils rigolent à chacune des anecdotes de leur généreux client. Ses gardes du corps scrutent attentivement les allées et venues. La comparution avec reconnaissance préalable de culpabilité qui l’attend est une formalité. Mieux, c’est plus que ce qu’ils pouvaient tous espérer après cinq années d’instruction menée par le juge financier Serge Tournaire.

L’enquête, baptisée « Soprano » par la police – du nom de cette série américaine narrant la vie d’un chef mafieux du New Jersey –, qui devait faire tomber le « parrain des parrains » corses, n’a pas tenu ses promesses. Si elle a mis au jour l’étendue de son empire économique en Afrique et sa proximité avec plusieurs chefs d’Etat qu’il n’a jamais hésité à faire profiter de ses largesses, les infractions pénales qui lui étaient reprochées ont été réduites à la portion congrue. « Je pense que si certains organes de presse ne m’avaient pas fait une certaine réputation, je ne serais pas là aujourd’hui », avait indiqué M. Tomi au cours de l’instruction.

Au cours d’une audience minimale qui aura duré une quinzaine de minutes, Michel Tomi, demeurant à Libreville au Gabon, a reconnu avoir perçu une commission de 1,6 million d’euros pour avoir joué l’intermédiaire sur un contrat d’achat de vedettes par l’Etat gabonais à une société française.

Read more on Le Monde 

The G5 Sahel Force, Failing the Region and Failing Itself

BAMAKO, Mali — The G5 Sahel Force was conceived to enable greater coordination among five countries in the Sahel region of West Africa in fighting jihadist groups and to strengthen regional administration and development while relieving the United Nations mission in Mali of those burdens.

Yet ever since the group — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — launched its military operations in July 2017, it has been defined more by what it lacks than by its actions.

A damning report by the United Nations Secretary-General published earlier this year and highlighted in November by the Security Council, said that the force has been hampered by a lack of funding, a devastating attack that killed five people and destroyed most of its military headquarters in Mali in July and a bias toward military solutions.

So, is the G5 Sahel Force, a French-led initiative backed by the UN but resisted financially by the United States, going to survive?

The grouping makes sense in that the modern-day borders of Sahelian countries were inherited from colonialism and often divide single communities among different nation-states. So far, the force’s units number 3,500 soldiers (from a target of 10,000) and have deployed on the border between Mauritania and Mali; the increasingly volatile Burkina Faso-Niger-Mali border; and the Niger-Chad border. Each G5 country cannot deal with the security problems alone, and everyone in the region can benefit from more coordination among the countries.

Although the alliance is also set to enhance development and trade, the actual steps taken in these directions remain vague. The substantive measures that are being promoted, however, favor more military solutions to multifaceted problems and do little to address the lack of basic social services in the region. These are enormous basic services: like access to pumped-in water into people’s homes and other essential sites; and electrical grids.

The UN report argued that “a military solution alone is not enough to create durable peace and stability,” and warned that “if the international community does not sufficiently invest in addressing the root causes of the conflict and support recovery and development in northern and central Mali, peace and security will remain elusive.”

Some of the G5’s operations were originally announced by the French defense minister, Florence Parly, reflecting that on the diplomatic, media, military and funding fronts, the force has been from the start a French-led plan. Like the French military mission Operation Barkhane in Mali and, to some extent, the UN mission there, called Minusma, the G5 Sahel serves European interests more than African ones.

France is keen to get the G5 Sahel off the ground because it views the force as a way of relieving some of the work that its own army does in the region and hopes to mitigate jihadist attacks on its own soil by relegating the battle against terrorists to countries in the region.

“French military and some government officials largely do not envision Barkhane or French forces drawing down any time soon, but it seems clear that many hope the G5 can be one possible long-term security solution for the region,” said Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow at the European Council of Foreign Relations. 

One problem is that the G5 Sahel builds on the faulty Algiers Accord, the Malian peace agreement signed in 2015 that has yet to be carried out fully, and on a fundamental difference between the Malian and French governments’ views of who is a terrorist.

When French forces intervened in Mali in 2012 to help drive a coalition of jihadist groups from the towns they occupied, Malian officials were elated. But the French did not want Malian soldiers to enter Kidal, the bastion of the MNLA Tuareg rebel group that is at the heart of the conflict. While France considers jihadist groups like Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to be the main enemy, for Mali, Tuareg separatists like the MNLA are the biggest threat to the country’s fragile existence.

Moreover, the Algiers Accord outlined the construction of basic infrastructure and social-service pledges like roads, schools and hospitals. Those pledges have not been met. (A crowd-sourcing campaign launched in December by France is soliciting donations to finance projects.) 

Almost six years after the French intervention, the French military conducts joint missions with former rebels in regions where the Malian state is a sworn enemy. Moreover, the violence has spread to other regions and countries. Not only do the northern regions of Mali continue to be attacked regularly, central Mali has become a target: 40 percent of the violence occurs in Mopti. Burkina Faso, nearby, has experienced more than 200 terrorist attacks since January 2016.

The G5 Sahel force has missed many of its funding targets but has procured half of its military budget. According to the UN secretary-general’s report, as of mid-November, about $225 million of the $469 million pledged has been received. President Emmanuel Macron of France has been sensitive to criticism that the force has materialized so slowly.

“We always see what’s not advancing. Don’t be so critical,” he said to the BBC in July, adding that French troops will remain in the region “for as long as necessary.”

 Although the Trump administration — through Ambassador Nikki Haley at the UN Security Council — has rebuffed funding appeals by Macron, the US is now a key donor to the force through direct and bilateral deals.

Read more on PassBlue