Word: mitterrand
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...This affair will not be covered up." So promised Pierre Beregovoy, the French Finance Minister, as he announced a criminal probe last week into an insider-trading scandal that is causing major embarrassment to Francois Mitterrand's government. The suspected scheme was uncovered when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission noticed heavy trading in Triangle Industries, a U.S. holding company, in the days prior to the Nov. 21 announcement of the company's takeover by Pechiney S.A., a French metals conglomerate. Estimated profits by insiders who bought early: $10 million...
...assignments in the opera world. A year and a half ago, he won the powerful job of artistic director at the still uncompleted Opera de la Bastille. In September the grateful government awarded him the Legion of Honor. But now Barenboim's luck has turned. While President Francois Mitterrand kept silent, he was summarily fired -- and just as summarily vowed to sue. He denounced the "lies, half- truths, bad faith and especially the incompetence of those in charge...
...autocratic president of the $400 million-a-year Yves Saint Laurent fashion empire and the designer's companion of 30 years. Some said Berge's chief qualification to be head of the governing Association of Theaters of the Paris Opera was that he had contributed handsomely to Mitterrand's re-election campaign last year...
...asked any such thing, only a veto power over Barenboim's decisions. "I have absolutely no interest in artistic control of the new opera," he told TIME. Nonetheless, he argues that Barenboim's choice of classic works is "elitist." Says he: "The program established by Barenboim . . . satisfies neither President Mitterrand nor me." But he puts considerable blame for the furor on the maestro's exalted pay: "I offered Barenboim a salary of 4 million francs (($667,000)), but he would not accept anything less than 5 million...
...opera house. The grand old Palais Garnier, with all its gilt mirrors and chandeliers and its resident phantom, has delighted audiences for more than a century. But cultural-monument building is a beloved Parisian occupation, and after the success of President Georges Pompidou's imposing modern-art center, Mitterrand naturally began in 1981 to think about a new opera house. Being a Socialist, he talked glowingly of popular, modern opera, and the edifice was assigned to the gritty Bastille area...