country firmly within the French sphere of influence.

Sassou-Nguesso's daughter Edith was Bongo's second wife until her death earlier this year. Investigators have identified 18 properties owned by Sassou-Nguesso in France, plus 112 bank accounts and at least one car bought for $224,492.

After more than 40 years as president of the hapless Gabonese people, Bongo finally died last Monday in a Barcelona clinic. This was denied back home in Gabon and then finally admitted by his prime minister.

Bongo's demise at the age of 73 had

the air of a tragi-comic Shakespearean play. Officially, Africa's longest-serving leader died from a 'heart attack', having suffered from cancer, but some suggest foul play, citing the possibility that he was poisoned by ambitious palace plotters. Whatever the truth, his body was flown on Thursday from Spain to Gabon, for a period of lying-in-state before he is buried this week.

The death sent French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his mandarins into a spin: Bongo has been France's most important ally in Africa since the De Gaulle era. The French army has a military base in the capital, Libreville, and French business giants such as Total and Bollore dominate Gabon's economy.

Most importantly, Bongo and his family have been donors-in-chief to the French political system for years, lavishing money on politicians from across the political spectrum. Giscard d'Estaing claimed this week on French radio that Bongo helped fund Jacques Chirac's bid for the French presidency in 1981.

"I learned that Bongo was

financially supporting Jacques Chirac," said Giscard. "I called Bongo and told him 'You're supporting my rival's campaign' and there was a dead silence that I still remember to this day and then he said 'Ah, you know about it', which was extraordinary. From that moment on, I broke off personal relations with him."

Chirac, questioned on Wednesday about Giscard's comments, dismissed the allegations as "totally unfounded". But if Chirac didn't get funding from Bongo, then he's one of the rare French politicians not to have received Gabonese cash.

The question now is whether Judge Desset's investigation will ever reach a conclusion. According to William Bourdon, there has been political pressure to shut it down from France's office of public prosecutors, which answers to the Ministry of Justice.

Says Bourdon: "It is the intention of Nicolas Sarkozy [that] this kind of enquiry will have no chance to move forward because [it's] considered against the political and economic interests of France in Africa. The appeal of the prosecutors is basically political because they're trying to put an end to an enquiry that threatens the Bongo and Sassou-Nguesso families."

As for Bongo's death, Bourdon insists it changes nothing. Much of the French property empire he amassed, including his son Ali Ben's apartment in a quiet road off the Avenue Foch, is held in the Bongo family name.