The Diamonds Affair

How Corruption, Silence, and Presidential Power Shook the French Republic

De: Evan Blackmoor

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Power never needs to be illegal to be corrupt. It only needs silence.

In 1979, a French newspaper revealed that President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had accepted diamonds from African dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa. There would be no trial. No conviction. No confession.

But the damage was irreversible.

The Diamonds Affair uncovers how a seemingly “customary gift” exposed a system where executive power operated beyond accountability—and how one scandal permanently weakened trust in the French Republic.

Through gripping narrative and rigorous investigation, Evan Blackmoor traces:

• How informal diplomacy and Françafrique enabled corruption without fingerprints

• Why presidential immunity became a shield rather than a safeguard

• How silence replaced justice—and elections replaced courts

• Why the affair still shapes modern democracies confronting unchecked power

This is not just the story of a scandal.

It is a warning.

From Africa to Paris, from private gifts to public collapse, The Diamonds Affair reveals how democracies fail not with coups—but with compromises.

If you read The Panama Scandal, The Dreyfus Affair, or The Stavisky Affair, this is the next chapter in the hidden history of modern power.