Word: yachting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...critics say the episode is only the latest to suggest Sarkozy has blurred the lines between personal friendships and presidential responsibilities. Following his election last year, for example, Sarkozy accepted the free use of a yacht owned by billionaire businessman Vincent Bolloré - a gift detractors call a potential conflict of interest, given the frequent intervention of the state into French economic affairs...
...Peter Munk, 80, the Hungarian-born Canadian who heads the mining giant Barrick Gold, that potential makes Montenegro a prime candidate for development. Relaxing in shorts and bare feet on his chartered 162-ft. (49 m) yacht on the deep blue waters near Tivat, Munk says Monaco was also a relatively backward town before it transformed itself - and swaths of the French Riviera with it - into the playground it is today. Tivat, or Porto Montenegro as the marina area is being renamed, will have a similar effect, Munk declares: "The whole Adriatic is going to be lifted up by this...
...idea for the development, says Munk, came to him while on holiday. For the past 20 years his family has chartered a yacht on the Mediterranean. In that time, he couldn't help noticing how the old marinas at Monaco, St. Tropez, Antibes and elsewhere had no easy way to expand even as more and more huge yachts came off the production lines. As a result, berth rental prices shot up. At Antibes, for example, they've risen nearly 30% in five years...
...becomes clearer on Saturday, when I end up at a yacht club party of professionals in their late twenties, mostly expats working in finance. After I get to the party, a group of us end up talking about languages...
...rich should be more careful," warns National University social science professor Carlos Gallego, referring to a plethora of magazines that depict a free-spending lifestyle of "polo and yacht clubs, exclusive parties, cars, horses and trips," a lifestyle he says is "unattainable for 98% of the Mexican population in a country where more than 42% live under the poverty line." He is careful to make clear that this lifestyle is not in itself a reason for the increase in kidnappings, but he argues that it is another factor of the social discontent that contributes to the breakdown of institutions...