Villepin on right with some other old guy.
Posted on 07/27/2007 8:32:32 AM PDT by Leisler
INVESTIGATING judges filed preliminary charges yesterday against former prime minister Dominique de Villepin for his suspected role in a smear campaign aimed at Nicolas Sarkozy before he was president.
The preliminary charges were for "complicity in slanderous denunciations", Mr de Villepin's lawyer, Luc Brossollet, said. The case stems from an alleged attempt in 2003-2004 to discredit Mr Sarkozy, who was a government minister at the time and a political rival of Mr Villepin within their conservative UMP party. Mr Villepin said he had done nothing wrong.
"At no moment did I take part in any political manoeuvring," he said after seeing the judges.
The bizarre, complex case has shaken France's political world to the core, and tainted the reputation of Mr Villepin, once the rising star of France's conservative power circles.
The scandal started simmering when a judge received a mysterious CD-ROM accusing Mr Sarkozy and other ministers of holding secret accounts with a Luxembourg bank, Clearstream. The accounts were purportedly created to hold bribes from a 1991 sale of frigates to Taiwan.
But investigators realised the scheme was a hoax and turned their attention to uncovering the culprits.
Investigating judges Henri Pons and Jean-Marie d'Huy suspect Mr Villepin of a role in the scheme to discredit his rivals, including Mr Sarkozy, who already had his sights on France's highest office at that point.
Mr Villepin was also believed to have presidential ambitions then, before his popularity plunged during last year's strikes and protests over a labour law he supported.
Mr Villepin has said his actions were "strictly in the framework" of his jobs as foreign minister and interior minister at the time.
"I was the victim of slander and lies," he said in December, after his initial hearing in the case.
AP
I’d LOVE to be on a jury trying DeVillipin, one of the most despicable creatures in history, as time will tell. His globe-trotting to undermine the US before we went into Iraq is, to me, unforgivable. And you KNOW it tied into the Food For Oil program. Just a b@st@rd, would put nothing past him. Guess I’d be disqualified from the jury ?
Villepin on right with some other old guy.
Somebody needs to mess up Pinevillage’s hair.
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