Suspicions arose that Takieddine had been paying kickbacks into Balladur's campaign coffers, but a series of investigations over the next decades produced no conclusive evidence of impropriety.
Earlier this year, Mr. Robinson subpoenaed records from Connecticut Republican Party headquarters to see whether party officials were involved in Mr. Silvester's efforts to funnel kickbacks into Republican campaigns.
To date, RosPil has identified violations in £800m-worth of government contracts, many of them apparently inflated tenders designed to put kickbacks into the pockets of bent officials.
One particularly rapacious former bank official from Shaanxi Province, Gong Aiai, has become known as "House Sister" for having parlayed bribes and kickbacks into a real estate portfolio of 41 apartments in Beijing.
That set the stage for abuses at Petrobras, the state-owned oil company, that would later ensnare scores of the nation's political and business elite in a scheme that funneled kickbacks into campaign coffers.
In December, prosecutors charged executives from six of the country's largest construction firms for allegedly channelling kickbacks into a Petrobras scheme to pay politicians.
JPMorgan Chase and a large insurer have agreed to a $300 million settlement to resolve accusations that they forced homeowners into buying overpriced property insurance and entered into kickback arrangements that inflated policy prices.
Republicans are trying to wheel and deal and get their own kickbacks put into the bill.
In September the company paid $137.5 million, settling a six- year federal investigation into kickback allegations, among others, made against a unit Caremark acquired last year.
Her supporters, however, stress that the president herself has not been directly implicated in any of the scandals, many of which emanate from a massive probe into kickback schemes within the state-run oil company Petrobras.
