Moreover, according to a book published last year in France but banned in Tunisia, Mr Ben Ali's family and influential wife, LeilaTrabelsi, own a number of lucrative monopolies that hamper the free market.
With time the web of influence extended both to the husbands of Mr Ben Ali's four adult daughters and to the many relatives of his second wife, LeilaTrabelsi, a former hairdresser whom he married in 1992.
It is not for nothing that LeilaTrabelsi has come to symbolize for the Tunisian protesters everything that Marie-Antoinette did for the sans-culottes, and that it is sympathy for her and her family that colors the lament from French allies of the regime.