Eva Joly

Born

1943-12-05

Birthplace

Oslo, Norway

Biography

Eva Joly, born Gro Eva Farseth on December 5, 1943, in Oslo, Norway, is a Franco-Norwegian magistrate and politician. She is known for her commitment to the fight against corruption and her remarkable career in the judicial and political spheres. Eva Joly grew up in a modest family in Oslo. At the age of 20, she left Norway to settle in France, where she worked as an au pair while pursuing her law studies. She earned a law degree and a postgraduate diploma in political science from Panthéon-Assas University. In 1981, she passed an exceptional entrance exam for the National School for the Judiciary, explaining: "There was no general knowledge test, and that suited me." That same year, at the age of 38, she was appointed deputy public prosecutor at the Orléans High Court. In 1989, she was seconded to the Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring (CIRI), an organization attached to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which supports struggling companies in disaster areas. She became the first Deputy Secretary General not to have graduated from the École nationale d'administration (ENA). She is also an auditor at the Institut des hautes études de défense nationale, where she taught in 1996. Appointed in 1990 as an investigating judge in the financial division of the Paris courthouse, she investigated high-profile cases, such as the one opposing Bernard Tapie to Crédit Lyonnais. She was then assigned the Bidermann case, which led via Elf-Gabon to the Elf affair, which she investigated with Laurence Vichnievsky. On July 5, 1996, Eva Joly had Loïk Le Floch-Prigent, former CEO of Elf Aquitaine and current President of SNCF, imprisoned. She then opened the files on the Taiwan frigates affair and the Dumas-Deviers-Joncour affair. In April 1998, she indicted Roland Dumas, President of the Constitutional Council, who was forced to resign. In March 2009, Eva Joly was called upon by the Icelandic government to serve as a special advisor in an investigation into possible financial crime that may have exacerbated the country's financial crisis. In 2009, Eva Joly was elected as a Member of the European Parliament on the Europe Écologie Les Verts list. She chairs the European Parliament's Development Committee and is distinguished by her expertise in financial flows and economic crime. In 2012, she was a candidate in the French presidential election. Eva Joly has also worked for the Norwegian government and the World Bank, contributing her expertise in the fight against corruption. In 2012, she called for the opening of military archives and the lifting of military secrecy "on nuclear tests in the sub-Saharan region and in Polynesia" in the 1950s and 1960s. After 2015, she joined the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT). She is the author of several books and continues to be consulted internationally for her expertise.