Press Interpreter

03/12/06 -- Robert Feliciaggi, 63, Corsican elected representative and shareholder in many gaming businesses in France and Africa, was cut down by multiple bullets on Friday, March 10 at about 11pm, while he was picking up his vehicle at the Campo dell'Oro airport near Ajaccio. According to initial witness accounts, the shooter appears to have acted alone, his face masked by a hood. "Mr. Feliciaggi had landed on a flight from Paris and was leaning over the trunk of his car when the assassin hit him in the head with at least three bullets from very short distance," specified a police source. Mr. Feliciaggi had been about to take the wheel of his car in an isolated part of the airport. The shooter escaped in a car that appeared to have been waiting for him not far away. Mr. Feliciaggi was quickly taken to the Ajaccio hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds an hour later.

A figure in local politics and the mayor of the village of Pila-Canale (South Corsica), he had been elected (by various rights) to the Assembly of Corsica, where he was the chair of the territorial Union party. Close to Charles Pasqua, with whom he created the movement Rally for France (RPF), Robert Feliciaggi was above all the center of "Corsafrica," a network of islanders -- most of whom were from southern Corsica -- who had made their fortunes in the old colonies of West Africa, principally in oil, import-export, and gaming. Mr. Feliciaggi frequently traveled to Africa, where, with his associate and friend Michel Tomi, managed horse gambling businesses, which he had established in close collaboration with local authorities in many countries (Togo, Cameroun, Benin, and the Ivory Coast). The two men had nevertheless quarrelled since they were charged in a judicial investigation into the financing of the campaign of Mr. Pasqua in the European elections in 1999. Investigators suspected them notably of having given a bribe in the form of part of the proceeds of the sale of the casino of Annemasse (Haute-Savoie) to the RPF before the campaign in payment for the authorization, given five years earlier by Mr. Pasqua when he was Minister of the Interior, to operate slot machines in the casino against the recommendation of General Intelligence*. Mr. Feliciaggi always denied this version of events, but this did not prevent him from being questioned in the case in January, 2002. This is the first time in 15 years that a Corsican elected representative has been assassinated.

[Photo Caption:] The Corsican elected representative was shot in the parking lot of the Ajaccio airport on March 10, 2006. View Photo.

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By Antoine Albertini, Reporter, Bastia

* A directorate of the French national police. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renseignements_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9raux .

--Translated by Ramsi Woodcock

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