Posted on 02/01/2004 5:48:44 PM PST by blam
Chirac sinks deeper into mire of scandal
By Philip Delves Broughton in Paris
(Filed: 02/02/2004)
President Jacques Chirac was fighting last night to regain control of a fast unravelling scandal encircling his political power base.
M Chirac seized charge of an inquiry into alleged telephone taps, break-ins and violent threats against judges investigating Alain Juppe, the former prime minister and his heir apparent, convicted on Friday of organising illegal party funding.
The extraordinary intervention came the day after the justice ministry announced it would investigate the allegations.
His gazumping of his own ministry indicates the seriousness with which he is taking the insinuation that he or his allies tried to pressure the judges in the Juppe case.
A statement issued by the prime minister's office said M Chirac had asked for three of the most senior judges in Paris to oversee the investigation and report to him in a month. "If these allegations are proved, they will be extremely serious," said the statement.
It is the first time M Chirac has launched such an inquiry, despite similar allegations over many years from magistrates investigating his colourful political past.
Juppe and 21 of M Chirac's former aides and business partners were convicted in relation to the funding of M Chirac's RPR party during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In a tough ruling, Judge Catherine Pierce effectively ended Juppe's political career by banning him from public office for 10 years and handing him an 18-month suspended prison sentence.
Juppe's conviction has outraged M Chirac and his supporters and provoked open warfare between France's supposedly independent judiciary and the politicians who find it meddlesome.
Bernadette Chirac, the president's wife, challenged the court's findings at the weekend by calling Juppe "a statesman of great stature and an honest man".
Others close to the president have sought to cast doubt on the judge's motives, anonymously accusing her in newspapers of envy and political malice. They are saying her ruling will be overturned on appeal.
Juppe and M Chirac share a relationship similar in nature to that between Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair.
For nearly 30 years, Juppe has been the tactician and organiser for the more personable M Chirac. He was described by his mentor as "the most brilliant man of his generation" and "the best among us".
Judge Pierce, 54, has hit back at the president's supporters by describing the sinister pressures placed on her and her two fellow judges in the Juppe case.
She told Le Parisien newspaper that her office had been broken into, her home and office telephones tapped, her computer files rifled and that she received a death threat before Juppe's sentencing.
"Lots of people wanted to know our decision," she said. In one incident she arrived at work to find the false ceiling in her office had been pulled down. A maintenance worker said the door to the next office was jammed and he was trying to get through the gap in the ceiling.
Judge Pierce was sceptical and began keeping notes on a personal computer rather than the office system, which she suspected was being accessed by outside parties. All of the judges suspected their telephones were tapped. One complained of strange time delays during his conversations, another of strangers' voices in the background.
The allegations lend a murky aura to a long legal process which has bedevilled M Chirac and his entourage. They are also consistent with complaints by other judges who have threatened the highest levels of the establishment.
Eric Halphen, a magistrate who spent seven years investigating alleged kickbacks paid to M Chirac's staff for building contracts while he was mayor of Paris, left the legal profession in 2002 and wrote a book describing what he endured. He said threatening notes were left on his windscreen and his telephone was tapped.
M Halphen summoned the president as a witness in the case, but after months of delay M Chirac succeeded in having the law on presidential immunity changed to protect him from legal suits while in office.
Several other cases against M Chirac remain in legal limbo because of his immunity. These include charges that he fiddled his grocery bill at the Paris town hall.
How else, magistrates have asked, could he have spent £1.5 million in eight years simply to feed himself and his wife? And why was nearly £1 million of that settled in cash?
M Chirac has also been implicated in the case which brought down Juppe, involving the use of Paris town hall money to pay salaries to party employees.
Juppe told friends that if he was convicted he would leave politics altogether so that he could retain his integrity in the "eyes of Clara", his daughter.
He is currently mayor of Bordeaux, a member of parliament and president of M Chirac's ruling party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UM). He has lodged an appeal, which could take another year to be heard.
Gazumping?
Franco-American peas in a pod.
Have a heart, Blam! Without Saddam's money, how is a crooked French politician going to live? And Chiraq was Saddam's good friend and bag-man.
Now that's impressive.
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