Chirac guilty of responsibility for 28 fictional Paris employees
PARIS, FRANCE – Jacques Chirac, France’s former president, was found guilt Thursday 15 December of paying for 28 employees out of the Paris budget when he was the city’s mayor, 1990 to 1995. The employees were real, but the jobs should not have been on the Paris payroll, for example chauffeurs for fellow RPR party members and eight jobs in Nanterre. Chirac was running for president at the time and the jobs, the prosecution argued, were designed to enlarge his sphere of influence. Chirac had already lost two bids for president at the time.
Seven others charged with Chirac were also found guilty of misuse of public funds and two were found innocent.
The 79-year-old former president, who could have faced up to seven years in prison and euros 150,000 in fines was not in court; he did not appear in court during the case’s hearing in September, either, absent due to severe and permanent neurological problems, according to his doctors.
The city of Paris did not press charges against Chirac, whose lawyers have argued that he could not have been aware of payroll details and that the salaries paid out of the Paris budget were an administrative error. Chirac and his party have repaid the salaries to Paris.
Links to other sites: Figaro (Fr), Le Monde and TSR with AFP (Fr)
Update Tuesday 8 March: The trial in Paris of former President Jacques Chirac has been postponed until late June to consider constitutional questions raised by the defense.
The French are waking up to a lively case of national politics Monday, with Marine Le Pen given the lead in a survey by Le Parisien newspaper, for the 2012 presidential elections, ahead of President Nicolas Sarkozy and Martine Obrey, Socialist candidate. Le Pen stepped into the shoes of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as head of the National Front, France’s far right party. French media are debating the validity of the survey.
Meanwhile, the corruption trial opens in Paris Monday 7 March of former President Jacques Chirac, 78, who is charged with giving contracts for work that didn’t exist to friends during the early 1990s, while he was mayor of Paris, before he became president of France. The case reportedly could be cut short today on a legal technicality, however. Chirac served as mayor of Paris from 1977-1995 and as president of France from 1995-2007. He was also twice prime minister, from 1974-76 and from 1986-88.
Paris, France (GenevaLunch) – Former Prime Minister of France Dominique de Villepin has been acquitted by a Paris court of plotting to discredit the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in a case that saw three other defendants judged guilty.
Sarkozy’s name was found on a list of clients of a bank in Luxembourg, clients allegedly linked to illegal arms sales. It was later established that the list was forged in order to slander Sarkozy during his bitter contest with de Villepin to succeed former President Jacques Chirac.
A judge in Paris has ordered former French President Jacques Chirac,77, to stand trial on charges of misuse of public funds and abuse of trust, while he was the mayor of Paris from 1977-1995. It is the first time that a former head of state is ordered to stand trial.
Chirac has always denied any wrong-doing, and issued a statement from Morocco, where he is on holiday with his family, saying that he faces the charges with serenity and determination to prove his innocence. Dominque Paille, a spokesman for the ruling UMP party said it was “regrettable” that Jacques Chirac should be sent to stand trial at the end of his life.
Chirac was elected president of France in 1995, and as reports began to surface that the Paris mayor’s office had illegally financed his RPR political party in the early 19990s, he ran again in 2002, assured of immunity from prosecution by a controversial new law. He was re-elected by a landslide, only because many voted for him to exclude his far-right opponent in the run-off, Jean-Marie LePen.
President Nicolas Sarkozy was jeered as he arrived 16 June at the presidential palace in Libreville, Gabon to attend the funeral of former president Omar Bongo, who died last week in a Spanish clinic after 40 years as president of his country. Sarkozy and former French president Jacques Chirac joined 40 other heads of state to lay a wreath on Bongo’s coffin. France, the former colonial power, maintained close relations with Gabon. But in May 2009 a judge in Paris decided to open an investigation of Bongo for corruption. BBC, Le Monde (Fre)
Former French President Jacques Chirac kept the promise he made to murder victim Ilan Halimi’s parents: 27 gang members who targeted Jews as their victims will go on trial in Paris for killing Halimi. Halimi was kidnapped and tortured for more than three weeks before his captors stabbed him, tied him to a tree and set him on fire three years ago. BBC
