AIDS group rejects allegations against France’s Bruni
Reuters
The Geneva-based Global Fund, a multi-billion-dollar fund set up 10 years ago to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, said Friday that a media report of alleged financial misconduct implicating French first lady Carla Bruni, an ambassador of the fund, was “inexact and misleading.”
The statement was issued after French weekly magazine Marianne published an article saying the Global Fund had awarded $3.5 million to companies controlled by a friend of Bruni, the wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, at her request. The funds were issued without a public tender, the magazine said.
“The article makes several allegations that are groundless regarding a campaign that the Fund launched in 2010 with the backing of Mme Bruni-Sarkozy,” said the statement.
Bruni, a singer and former supermodel who married Sarkozy in early 2008, was appointed “first ambassador” in the same year of the Global Fund.
The fund was set up in 2002 and says it has saved 7.7 million lives with funding for AIDS treatment and programs worldwide to fight malaria and tuberculosis.
Sarkozy’s office said it had no comment to add to the statement.
