The French public prosecutor and the police’s white collar crime squad have opened a preliminary investigation of 17 charities, including several medical research charities, and humanitarian ones, the newspaper Le Parisien revealed yesterday. Under the French judicial system this is an information gathering probe, and no formal investigation of the charities or any individuals has been made.

The medical charities include one working on diabetes, another on age-related macular degeneration, two on Alzheimer’s disease, and two on cancer. A key question investigators will be addressing is what proportion of the millions of euros collected by the charities was spent on their stated charitable aims. Perhaps complicating the investigation, it’s reported that several of the charities are French nodes of ones based in the United States, or of international networks.

The France charity scene was rocked in the 1990’s by the discovery of a major financial fraud in the country’s biggest medical charity, L’Association pour la Recherche contre le Cancer, which resulted in the late Jacques Crozemarie, it’s president being sentenced in 2000 to four years imprisonment, along with paying heavy fines, and damages to the charity. Researchers associated with the charity, including beneficiaries of its research funding, came under fire at the time for having turned a blind eye to longstanding rumours of wrongdoing at the charity.