Sex scandals, as everyone knows, don't count for much in France. In Jacques Chirac's case his ability to run several mistresses at the same time was seen as proof of his excellent administrative abilities. No, the real taboo has always been money. Or at least it was until Nicolas Sarkozy came to power on a wave of unabashed bling. Since then it is hard to know just where the moral compass has been set, or even if there is one any more.

Two corruption scandals in particular make one wonder just what it would take for a minister to resign – or a president for that matter, despite their smug immunity from prosecution in office. One scandal involves the deaths of 11 innocent people, allegedly killed to pay for the absurd political ambitions of Sarkozy's mentor; the other that his presidential campaign may have been bankrolled by an old lady cajoled into stuffing cash into envelopes in return for the taxman looking the other way.

We're a hell of a long way from duck islands here, particularly in the case of "L'Affaire Karachi", the most potentially far-reaching political corruption scandal in decades. If investigating magistrates are right, Sarkozy, when budget minister in 1994, used illegal kickbacks from an arms sale to Islamabad to fund the failed presidential campaign he ran for his mentor, the spectacularly chinless Edouard Balladur. The following year the newly elected Chirac, arch-rival of Sarkozy and Balladur, ordered a stop to the bribes. Then, in 2002, 11 French engineers were killed in a suicide bombing in Karachi while on their way to work on the submarines.

An investigative judge believes the attack was probably a retribution hit because France had stopped the commission payments. Families of the victims are prepared to file a manslaughter suit against Chirac if there is evidence he knew of the danger to French staff in Pakistan. Was in-fighting in his own party so important to Chirac that he put the lives of innocent French people in danger? Were Sarkozy and Balladur so desperate for cash that they concocted dodgy arms sales to Pakistan that fleeced their own government of tens of millions? They vehemently deny it and the investigation continues . . . well, after a fashion, because classified documents have been kept from the independent investigating judges who say their work has been obstructed at every turn. Now the Paris prosecutor's office, which answers to the government, is trying to stop one of the independent judges looking into the kickbacks.

The Elysée has also being accused of using telephone taps and perhaps even thefts of journalists' computers to suppress another scandal, "L'Affaire Bettencourt". But like the helmet hair of the L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt herself, it keeps bouncing back.

To summarise: 88-year-old Bettencourt, the richest woman in France, bequeathed vast sums of money to a dandy photographer known for charming ageing socialites. Her daughter, fearing her mother was not of sound mind and was being exploited, went to the courts. The family feud turned nasty and the elderly Bettencourt appealed to her friend Sarkozy to get the prosecutor's investigation closed. Then secret recordings by Bettencourt's butler were leaked that raised allegations of tax evasion, influence-peddling and illegal party funding. Had she been made to hand over large amounts of cash to illegally finance Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign? Did Eric Woerth – simultaneously the budget minister and Sarkozy's party treasurer – go cap in hand to Bettencourt for illegal donations? Her financial manager, Patrice de Maistre, gave Woerth's wife a lucrative job in his office and Woerth gave De Maistre the prestigious Legion of Honour. Meanwhile, a blind eye was allegedly turned to large-scale tax evasion.

Sarkozy stood by Woerth, who quit as party treasurer but continued as labour minister. Yet he seemed genuinely shocked when he was finally dropped by the president in the reshuffle last week. However no sooner had Woerth left office than he was under fire over a potentially corrupt land deal to sell off 57 hectares of the Compiègne forest in his constituency north of Paris. Again, he denies all wrongdoing.

But fear not, Woerth's political career is probably far from over. Sarkozy believes in giving people a second chance. Alain Juppé, the new defence minister, received a 14-month suspended sentence for corruption over a party-funding scandal in 2004 and was barred from holding elected office for a year. But history is history. The interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, Sarkozy's closest friend, is responsible for immigration policy, yet this year he was fined for a making a racist comment about north Africans. The new justice minister, Michel Mercier, had seen his name mentioned in an investigation into illicit links between party funding and a public transport contract in Lyon, but on the day of his appointment the state prosecutor dismissed and closed the case (apparently, the timing was coincidence). As for the new junior health minister, Nora Berra, she said there was no conflict of interest in the fact that she had, until recently, spent 10 years working in the upper echelons of the pharmaceutical industry.

Sarkozy based his last presidential campaign on convincing the nation he's the opposite of Chirac, who despite the tradition of presidential immunity will go on trial for corruption next year. That the Chirac corruption case has been allowed to go ahead is partly due to Sarkozy failing to protect his bitter rival from the law. Yet if these "affaires" keep rolling, one day Sarkozy too may find himself in that dock.