Eva Joly

Eva Joly (born December 5, 1943 as Gro Eva Farseth) is a Norwegian-born French magistrate. Born in Grünerløkka, Oslo, she moved to Paris at 18 to work as an au pair. There, against the will of the parents, she married the son of the family, Pascal Joly (now deceased).

Working as a secretary, she took her legal education at night school. Joly specialised in financial affairs, and in 1990 she joined the High Court of Paris as an investigating judge.

Here she quickly made a mark with her tireless crusade against corruption, in particular taking on, among others, former minister Bernard Tapie and the bank Crédit Lyonnais. Her most famous case, however, was that of France’s leading oil company – Elf Aquitaine. In the face of death threats, she carried on the case to uncover several cases of fraud.

In 2002, Reader's Digest named her European of the Year. The 2006 French film L'Ivresse du pouvoir (English title "Comedy of Power", though more properly translated as "power madness") is loosely based on Eva Joly.

As of March 10, 2009, Joly is employed as a special adviser by the Icelandic government to investigate the possibility that white-collar crime may have played a part in the 2008–2009 Icelandic financial crisis. Eva enjoys enormous widespread popularity of the majority of the Icelandic public and has become an icon in the battle against possible frauds by the banking elite.

On 10 June 2009, she was a guest at a popular talk show in Iceland - and implied that she would quit being an advisor to the Icelandic government if they did not do more to help the investigation.

On 7 June 2009, Joly was elected as a French member of the European Parliament on the Ile de France "Europe Écologie" list, on which she was 2nd to Daniel Cohn-Bendit. She is chair of the Committee on Development.

Joly will most likely run for president of France in the election of 2012. As of October 2010, she is a nominee with in Europe Écologie (“green party”) to be their candidate for the upcoming election.

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