On April 20, Webdo resumed information published in the weekly “Le Canard Enchaîné” of the same day.
“How Ben Ali bought the favors of” Jeune Afrique “”: in this article the satirical weekly explains how Zine El Abidine Ben Ali would have played a big role in the rescue of “Jeune Afrique” and would have allowed the magazine to get up following a serious financial crisis.
“Le Canard Enchaîné” even reveals that the former Tunisian president would have forced dozens of Tunisian companies to acquire 10,500 actions from “Jeune Afrique”. A way to bail out the magazine’s boxes!
Today, the magazine “Jeune Afrique”, implicated in this article, responds to the “Canard Enchaîné” through its director-founder Béchir Ben Yahmed, a response published in its entirety on the magazine website (http://www.jeuneafrique.com/article/artja2011042913835/).
What does this answer say? “Jeune Afrique” first denies all the information published in the said article by assimilating it to “a mixture of approximation, aggressiveness and slander” judging, in passing, the satirical weekly to be in “the error of judgment and the imposture”.
To support his thesis and contradict the words of the “Duck chained”, “Jeune Afrique” draws up a meticulous state of his situation in 1997, the year of “facts”.
Here is what Mr. Béchir Ben Yahmed recalls: “The operation subject to the duck article was to subscribe to an increase in the capital of Jeune Africa of private citizens (natural or legal persons) of a country of the reading area of Jeune Afrique, endowed with an autonomous currency with exchange control”. (…).
“Was it secret, particular?” Was it only criticism? Not the least in the world. It took place over several months, which clearly shows that Jeune Afrique was not in a hurry, even less in agony; We wanted private and non -public shareholders, we wanted them to be numerous – so that none of them even hold 0.5% of capital and that the whole totals about 6% of the capital – and that they are representative of all sectors of activity. ” (…).
“The Presidency of the Tunisian Republic has intervened for the decisive reason that here is: the subscription was made in dinars, national currency not convertible, but by its transfer to France in the capital of a French law company it became an investment abroad, in francs (it was before the transition to the euro), requiring the authorization of the Tunisian central bank”. (…).
Here is for the explanation! But Mr. Ben Yahmed goes further by dissecting the operating mechanisms of the operation carried out by his magazine.
“Launched in Tunis in 1960, Jeune Afrique has acquired, decade after decade, a club of six hundred small shareholders from fifty-five countries, most of them African. At the rate of a few actions or dozens of actions for everyone, so that the majority of the capital and the control remain in the hands of its founder, which happened to be (until 2008) the director of his editorial staff. ” (…).
“This is how we searched new shareholders, during successive capital increases, in Senegal, Mauritania, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Burundi, Rwanda, Mali, but also in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada …”. (…).
“They know – and the shareholder candidates also know it – that this does not give them any power of influence on the editorial orientation of the newspaper and that Jeune Afrique does not distribute dividends”. (…).
And to specify by concluding: “This is exactly what happened in Tunisia in 1997 and, consequently, the Duck chained, quite simply: Jeune Afrique was by no means agony and Ben Ali bought any favor”.
