Eva Joly: fighting injustice, as always

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Eva Joly is one of my favourite people. I'm delighted to have her as a friend.

Eva-Joly-Green-MEP-007.jpg

This morning the Guardian has run a really good profile of her, and her work. I warmly recommend it. Here's a little flavour:

Eva Joly does not look like Europe's most successful fraud prosecutor, the scourge of French boardrooms for decades. She is more than half an hour late as she sweeps into a cafe in Montparnasse from a cold, wet, grey Paris morning. Her eyes smile over natty, red-rimmed spectacles as she introduces herself in quiet tones, holding on to a handshake throughout, and apologises for her delayed arrival. Her French accent shows no trace of her Norwegian roots. Now a leading figure in the French Green party and an MEP, Joly is expected to run for president next year.

And:

Despite her 67 years, she is bristling with the same drive and determination, underpinned by a rare blend of political zeal and a lawyer's attention to detail. "I am not getting away from combating fraud," she says. "This is why I am going into politics. It's another way of fighting fraud in the interests of ordinary people, trying to prevent the oligarchy taking all the power and all the money ‚Ķ We have been living in a kind of collective illusion that this is how the world is — that the poor shall always be poor, ordinary people shall be squeezed to the benefit of a kind of oligarchy."

Despite her 67 years? Maybe because of. Most people haven't a quarter of her energy.

And she delivers. In the last week The Development Committee in the European Parliament adopted the report by the chairperson Eva Joly on "Tax and Development — cooperating with developing countries on promoting good government in tax matters".

The world needs more Eva's, but I'm delighted with the one we've got.


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