French signal major Corsican clean-up

Paris - Ten weeks after the murder of the highest French official on Corsica, the government yesterday announced an overhaul …

Paris - Ten weeks after the murder of the highest French official on Corsica, the government yesterday announced an overhaul of senior bureaucratic posts to show its determination to clean up the Mediterranean island. "We are shaking things up to give a strong signal," the Interior Minister, Mr Jean-Pierre Chevenement, said.

Paris has put a new team in place on the island, rocked for decades by separatist violence, since the murder on February 6th of the regional prefect, Mr Claude Erignac. Mr Erignac's successor, Mr Bernard Bonnet, has also promised to fight tax evasion and breaches of building regulations. In a related move, police said they had opened an investigation into possible corruption in the Corsican development fund.