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Chirac loyalists face trial over funds scandal

By Vaiju Naravane

PARIS

OCT. 1.

Who was responsible for giving fake jobs to political activists from the President, Jacques Chirac’s Rally for the Republic (RPR) Party when he was the powerful Mayor of Paris? Who leaned on businesses to contribute to the party coffers in return for lucrative municipal building contracts? Was there a secret fund that siphoned off money from the municipality to the RPR? These questions dominate the current trial of senior officials of the RPR party. Those in the dock for the three-week-long trial include the former Prime Minister, Alain Juppe, and other senior Ministers.

The lengthy trial is likely to shed light on the system of alleged illegal funding of the political party of Mr. Chirac up into the mid-1990s. The finances of the Paris municipality in the 80s and 90s is a hot potato that no one wishes to handle.

Mr. Juppe, who was the conservative Prime Minister from 1995 to 1997 and is one of Mr. Chirac’s closest aides, is the star defendant in the biggest case yet to come to court aimed at uncovering financial irregularities during the President’s 18-year tenure to 1995 as Mayor of Paris.

Altogether 27 persons — party functionaries and businessmen — are in the dock in the court in Nanterre over payments made by the Paris municipality and private companies which bankrolled the salaries of dozens of staff-members at Mr. Chirac’s RPR party.

Deeply implicated in the affair as a result of a document bearing his signature, Mr. Chirac is himself immune from prosecution as a result of his Presidential status, but the trial will once again raise questions over how much — as RPR leader — he knew of the scam.

One senior Member of Parliament, Francoise de Panafieu, has hinted that Mr. Chirac should take part of the responsibility, when she said Mr. Juppe “was just a cog … he was the underling who’s taking the rap.”

The verdict will have a vital bearing on the career of Mr. Juppe, who is Mayor of the southwestern city of Bordeaux and considered as a possible successor to Mr. Chirac. Mr. Juppe faces a maximum five years in jail if he is found guilty of “taking illegal benefits” — but aides said his greater fear is a ban on holding public office which would scupper his political ambitions.

Mr. Juppe served as Mr. Chirac’s first Prime Minister after the 1995 Presidential election but his social reform programme led to widespread strikes and he lost office to the Socialist, Lionel Jospin, in 1997. In a recent interview he said he was “responsible, yes, but guilty — no.”

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