Hervé Gaymard

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Hervé Gaymard

Hervé Gaymard (born May 31, 1960 in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Savoie) is a French politician and a member of UMP conservative party. He served as the country's Minister of Finances from 30 November 2004 until his resignation on 25 February 2005.

Gaymard attended the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and then at the École nationale d'administration, graduating from the latter in 1986. After that he worked as a civil servant in a number of finance-related positions.

He was elected as a local councillor in Savoie's canton de Moûtiers in 1994. He later served on the departmental council of Savoie, and in 1999, became its president. He was appointed to the finance ministry in November 2004, and was forced to resign barely 12 weeks later, on Friday, Feb 25, 2005.

[edit] Scandal

Gaymard's resignation as Minister of Finances came after the satirical and investigative newspaper Le Canard enchaîné disclosed on Feb 16, 2005 that the government was funding an exclusive apartment for Gaymard and his family (his wife and his 8 children). The duplex apartment, located in the exclusive "Golden Triangle" neighbourhood off Paris' Champs-Élysées, reportedly had an area of 600 m² (6460 sq ft) and cost the state a monthly rental of €14,000. Aside from the luxuriously high rent, the state was also funding $3,300 a month for maintenance and three parking spaces, $42,000 to renovate the apartment and the parking area, and $16,000 in real estate fees. At first, Gaymard justified the expense by claiming he had nowhere else to live (saying he was "clean as a new penny"). In an interview with Paris Match magazine, he was quoted as saying: "I have always lived humbly. I do not have money. Obviously if I wasn't the son of a shoe-maker, if I was a member of the bourgeoisie, I wouldn't have any housing problem. I would own my own apartment and we wouldn't have this affair."

Subsequent newspaper reports (in the Canard and Libération) showed he owned a large 4 bedroom, 200 m² (2150 sq feet) Parisian apartment on the Boulevard St Michel on the Left Bank in the Latin Quarter and several holiday properties (a vacation home in Brittany, a house, a garage, and 2 small apartments in his native Alpine Savoie region). Worse, the Ministry of Finances already had ministerial apartments installed inside the Ministry; Gaymard contended that this arrangement would have been unwieldy for his large family (as the spaces provided were too small to allow for one bedroom per person).

It should be noted that the Parisian apartment was at the time already rented out, for €2300 a month. Also, his wife Clara was the country's ambassador at large to attract foreign investment in France; their combined income and benefits taken together could have provided for the monthly rent. On the other hand, while French ministers are entitled to official accommodation, the price of his flat, even for central Paris, was deemed unacceptably extravagant by many critics once it was known. The extra costs of converting the flat to his family's needs dismayed public and politicians alike. Also, contradictory to his statements pleading poverty, Libération said Gaymard was wealthy enough to have to pay France's special wealth tax, which applies to those whose assets top €720,000.

[edit] Resignation

While Gaymard's actions were not illegal, the exposure of Gaymard's accepting lavish, state-funded perks, then attempting to lie in interviews, was bad news for the government at a time when the French public was asked to accept more economic sacrifices while reeling from a staggering unemployment rate that reached 10% in January, the highest level in over five years. Gaymard himself had said that the French should become "detoxified" of public spending. Curbing spending has been at the fore-front of Gaymard's office, giving hope to voters that the economy there would soon improve. And, as it was part of his responsibilities to regulate the housing market, he could not be unaware of the difficulties facing families seeking affordable accommodations.

He resigned less than 5 hours before he was to give a televised interview defending his actions. In his issued statement, he said, "I am aware that I committed blunders and, above all, a serious error of judgement…"

Following this scandal, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin tightened up the rules for public officials using state-funded apartments. However, the Canard soon revealed that Budget Minister Jean-François Copé also enjoyed an expensive apartment paid for by the state while he owned an apartment in Paris.

There has been some controversy regarding how the Canard and Libération had obtained such information. It was at some point suggested that they were orchestrated by Nicolas Sarkozy, a political rival of Gaymard from the same party.

A few weeks after the scandal, it was revealed that the 2003 tax filings of Gaymard and five other personalities had disappeared from the safe of a tax office in which they were stored.

On August 26, 2005, Hervé Gaymard was reintegrated into the civil service corps of the administrateurs civils, with a hors-classe rank, and assigned to the Ministry of Finances (direction of the budget). (ministerial decision in Journal Officiel, September 13, 2005; Le Monde, September 20, 2005) after refunding the state the €58,894 that the refurbishing of his apartment had cost. Hervé Gaymard has previously announced that he considered working in the private sector. It is unknown, at this point, whether he considers going back to politics in the future.