Cable 08TUNIS679: 'Corruption in Tunisia: What's Yours is Mine'

Cable 08TUNIS679 was sent from the US embassy in Tunis on 23 June 2008, classified Secret by the ambassador, Robert F. Godec, under the subject line 'Corruption in Tunisia: What's Yours is Mine'. Drawing on Transparency International data and embassy contacts, it reports that corruption in Tunisia was getting worse and that President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's extended family – especially the relatives of his wife, Leila Ben Ali, the Trabelsis – was 'often cited as the nexus of Tunisian corruption'.

The cable recounts allegations about land, property, banking and business deals, including the reported theft in 2006 of a yacht belonging to a French businessman by two of Ben Ali's nephews, and the gift of land in Carthage to Leila Ben Ali for a private school. Its summary opens: 'Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your yacht, President Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants.'

The embassy linked rumours of corruption, rising inflation and unemployment to growing frustration with the government and to recent protests in the Gafsa mining region. The ambassador's comment concluded that corruption was 'the elephant in the room; it is the problem everyone knows about, but no one can publicly acknowledge.'

I released the cable on 7 December 2010 as part of our staged publication of Cablegate. According to PBS NewsHour, Tunis embassy cables published from late November 2010 were translated and spread through Tunisian websites and social networks; Al Jazeera cited this cable in its coverage after Ben Ali fled the country in January 2011.

Its role in the uprising is debated. Foreign Policy asked, in a January 2011 article by Elizabeth Dickinson, whether Tunisia's was 'The First WikiLeaks Revolution?', while others stressed that the cables largely confirmed what Tunisians already believed: Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland told PBS that WikiLeaks 'added substantial evidence to the story that people already knew'. The cable belongs to the Cablegate archive for which Chelsea Manning was convicted in 2013; the US government has not individually authenticated it.