the maze of Roland Dumas’ life, from the courts to politics and business

At first, life did not seem to be easy for the young Roland Dumas, born in Limoges in 1922. His father Georges, a civil servant, member of the Socialist Party and theSecret Armywas shot by the Germans in 1944 for acts of Resistance. Roland was then 22 years old and he himself was involved in the Resistance, in Francea fight which earned him the War Cross 1939-1945 and the Volunteer Combatant’s Cross at the Liberation.

With his decorations in his pocket, he ” mounted ” in Paris where he studied law. Passionate about opera, he hesitated for a moment to become an opera singer. He would finally use his charm and his melodious voice in the courtrooms, where he soon became a tenor.

The bar as a springboard

When Roland Dumas asked the Paris Bar to resign in May 2013, he ended 64 years of practice during which he had pleaded in cases that went down in history. He thus defended Francis Jeanson, the organizer of the fundraising network of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) during the Algerian War. He was a civil party in the Ben Barka case and pleaded in the Markovicet Jean de Broglie cases… Picasso, Giacometti and Jean Genet also called upon his talents as a lawyer. So many cases that made the headlines of the newspapers of the time and allowed Roland Dumas to shine in the courts, as much as at dinner parties.

All this is already a great success for the young man from Limoges, but it is still far from what he hoped for. He is ambitious and when he looks to the future, his gaze does not come up against any limits. It is François Mitterrandwhom he met in 1945, who would be the one who would provide him with the opportunities to surpass himself and taste the gold of the Republic. Roland Dumas would be the lawyer of the future president during the embarrassing affair of the Observatory attack in 1959, the starting point of an unwavering fifty-year friendship between the two men.

Three years earlier, in 1956, it was Mitterrand who gave Dumas his investiture by the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR); he thus became deputy of Haute-Vienne. He would defend Jeanson and his network in 1960 while Mitterrand, former Minister of the Interior and Justice (1954-1957), had never stopped fighting his friends of the Algerian FLN. They accommodated perfectly these oppositions which in no way prevented the two gentlemen, both as seductive as the other, from sharing many other subjects of agreement.

The two best speakers

From 1956 to 1983 Roland Dumas sat, with some interruptions, at the Palais Bourbon. François Mitterrand became President of the Republic in 1981; Dumas had to wait until 1983 to enter the government as responsible for European Affairs. In 1984, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, this ” which I had dreamed of since my adolescence ” he writes without false modesty in Assault and battery: 50 years of secrets shared with François Mitterrandpublished in 2011.

He presided over France’s foreign affairs for seven years, working in particular for the creation of a Palestinian state and, with more success, for peace in Cambodia. A man of secret missions, Roland Dumas was like a fish in water in the meanders of the Françafrique. Didn’t the Gabonese Omar Bongo call him ” his brother » ? A confirmed Freemason, a proclaimed free man, he frequents the entire political spectrum without forgetting the extreme right.

In his latest book, In the Eye of the Minotaur: The Labyrinth of My Lives (Cherche-Midi), he quotes with greedy pleasure Jean-Marie Le Pen reminding him that in the Chamber, where they were elected together in 1956, ” we were still the two best speakers in the Assembly ! » His daughter, Marine Le Pen, also finds favor in his eyes: ” I did say that she had qualities and probably also charm, which, in my eyes, is also one of those qualities. »

” Mitterrand has two lawyers: Badinter for the right and Dumas for the crooked. »

This independence of mind could also lead him to get involved in operations that were not always glorious. Which made his friends and others say: ” Mitterrand has two lawyers: Badinter for the right and Dumas for the crooked. “But when asked about this part of his life, he talks about his impoverished youth and the lesson he learned from it: that you need money to be free.

This is perhaps how he will stumble in theElf casea political-judicial saga which will reveal the networks, the commissions, the not very flattering relations of a Roland Dumas at the height of his success, president of the Constitutional Council, fourth person of the State, forced to resign in 2000.

In front of Judge Eva Joly, the game is tough and the brilliant conversationalist recognized by all leaves her cold. Sentenced at first instance to six months in prison and two years suspended, he finally obtains an acquittal in 2003. But the long procedure almost broke him. Everything was laid bare: his private life, his mistressthe expensive gifts he accepts, his immoderate taste for beautiful things and luxury…

A few years later, in 2007, he was once again in trouble with the law. This time, it was the estate of the sculptor Alberto Giacometti of which he is the executor. He will be sentenced for complicity in breach of trust to 12 months of suspended imprisonment and a fine of 150,000 euros. His last high-profile action will be in December 2010 in the company of his colleague the lawyer Jacques VergesThe two friends go to Ivory Coast to support Laurent Gbagbo who contests the victory of Alassane Ouattara.

In recent years, the old lawyer devoted himself mainly to writing in his Parisian office on the Quai de Bourbon, on the Île Saint-Louis. He could also be seen a few times at the Opera, his lifelong passion, leaning on a cane, still looking handsome, his white hair swept back. Otherwise, no more dinners in town for the man who had shone so much there, but a few television sets to talk, once again, about foreign or French politics because it never leaves you.