De Villepin may be charged with framing Sarkozy

Times:

Police searched the home of Dominique de Villepin, the former French Prime Minister, yesterday as judges appeared close to charging him with conspiring to implicate Nicolas Sarkozy, now the President, in a corruption scandal. Criminal charges are thought likely after examining judges unearthed new evidence that appears to put Mr de Villepin, 56, close to the heart of the so-called Clearstream affair.

The scandal, under investigation since 2005, involves forged bank records that suggested falsely that Mr Sarkozy and other senior figures had received big bribes in the sale of French warships to Taiwan.

Mr de Villepin was serving as Foreign and then Interior Minister and Mr Sarkozy, his rival for the future presidency, was Finance, then Interior Minister.

The affair poisoned the already strained relations between Mr de Villepin, the protégé of Mr Chirac, and the President’s mutinous subordinate, who was intent on succeeding him.

Investigating judges and police arrived yesterday afternoon at the expensive Paris apartment building where Mr de Villepin lives.

They were acting on material that was extracted last week from erased data on an intelligence officer’s computer. This added to evidence that Mr Chirac had been briefed on the affair at the time, according to leaked judicial transcripts. Two weeks ago the former President refused to obey a judicial summons for questioning over the case. His lawyers argued that he was immune from inquiries into any acts undertaken during his presidency.

Mr de Villepin, a career civil servant who lost his government post after Mr Sarkozy’s election in May, insisted that he had no role in circulating the false bank data. “In response to the false allegations of recent days . . . Dominique de Villepin repeats that he never sought to investigate nor compromise any political figure in the Clearstream affair,” his lawyers said.

The former Prime Minister also repeated earlier denials that he had discussed Mr Sarkozy’s apparent implication with Mr Chirac at the time.

However, Mr de Villepin will now seek to be an “assisted witness”, a status that enables suspects to be accompanied by their lawyers at judicial interviews, they said.

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What do you think the chances are that these are the same people that worked with some Italians to cook up phony evidence on the Niger uranium? This will be a very interesting case to follow. Why is Chirac also attempting to avoid testifying? A strange affair, but very French.