Justice Under Siege

Eva Joly was born in Norway and went to Paris as an au pair at the age of 20. She took evening classes and by 37 she had completed a doctorate in law. Aged 50, Joly moved to the Palais de Justice in Paris as an investigating magistrate. In the spring of 1994, one of France's most flamboyant public figures was the first to get a taste of Madame Joly's judicial nouvelle cuisine. She investigated Bernard Tapie, owner of the hugely popular Marseilles football club and President Mitterrand's minister of urban affairs - and found a tax evader up to his elbows in fraud. But the Elf case did not become sensational until Joly zeroed in on Roland Dumas, former foreign minister under Mitterand. She learned of a GBP 1 million luxury apartment and a GBP 4,300 monthly expense budget allotted to Dumas's mistress Christine Deviers-Joncour, who had been put on the Elf payroll for unspecified duties. She locked up Deviers-Joncour, called Dumas in for questioning and personally presided over a search of his Parisian apartment. Eva Joly now lives in Oslo.