Panama scandals

The Panama scandal was a bribery scandal at the time of the French Third Republic at the end of the 19th century.

1879 a French company was established to fund the construction of the Panama Canal by Ferdinand de Lesseps. The company was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1889, after which she was trying get at their financial difficulties by means of a lottery. The statutory authorization for this purpose was, inter alia Lesseps partakers Cornélius heart and Baron Jacques de Reinach obtained through bribery of numerous politicians and journalists. The bankruptcy of Compagnie de Panama was nevertheless inevitable. The French government maintained the loss for the shareholders initially secret, which led to a sharp loss of confidence in the people next to the discovery of the corruption scandal.

The government of Prime Minister Émile Loubet had in 1892, the Alexandre Ribot government to resign in 1893. Also, the later Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was involved in the scandal, but was able to continue his political career.

At the Panama scandal also some Jewish financiers ( Cornélius heart, Jacques de Reinach, Émile Arton, Louis Andrieux ) were involved, what the anti-Semitism in France made ​​feed.

The Republic, as such, could not destabilize what reason was that the public interest was taken a short time later by the Dreyfus affair in claim scandal. Although a questioning of the political power is clearly visible, but this did not jeopardize the political system as such. Due to the rapid rise and growing influence of the French press, however, the Panama scandal led to a politicization especially in the lower strata of the population.