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Former Prime Minster faces criminal charges |
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Wednesday, 19 November 2008 |
Investigating magistrates in the Clearstream affair, Jean-Marie d'Huy and Henri Pons have decided that the former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin should stand trial for being an accessory to a criminal libel – "complicité de dénonciation calomnieuse".
The judges have taken a sterner line than the prosecuting authorities who at one point claimed that there was insufficient proof to support charges. De Villepin himself told journalists that “nothing justified” his prosecution and that “throughout the investigation, the truth as to the facts and the law have been distorted for the benefit of a single ‘partie civile’ who is at the same time today President of the Republic”. Nicolas Sarkozy is one of the 40 individuals who claim to have been damaged by the submission of a false list of illegal bank account holders to the prosecuting authorities. The claim was that the persons named were banking bribes and illegal kickbacks relating to the sale of frigates to Taiwan. Sarkozy further claims to have been damaged by Dominique de Villepin’s failure to reveal promptly that he knew the allegations were bogus. At the time of the alleged offences the two men were rivals to become the candidate for the UMP for the presidential elections held in 2007. There is some sympathy for de Villepin because many believe that if he has committed any offence it was at the direction of the then President Jacques Chirac who is protected from possible prosecution under the constitution. Others however remember that in looking after the ex President’s interests he was not gentle in his treatment of people that got in his way. His one time friend the writer and journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert, who became deeply hostile to him has commented « this man is above all a Mozart of political manipulation, all honey on the surface and without pity underneath. It is the main plank in the defence against the accusations in the trial for smuggling arms to Angola that the defendants are the victims of dirty tricks organised by those who were close to Chirac. No one was closer than Dominique de Villepin.
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