Chirac under investigation for activities when Paris mayor
By Marlise Simons Published: November 21, 2007

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PARIS: Former President Jacques Chirac was placed under formal investigation on Wednesday on suspicion that he misused public funds by handing out bogus work contracts while he was mayor of Paris.

Chirac's lawyer, Jacques Veil, said a judge examining "fraudulent misuse of public funds" had questioned his client for three and a half hours on Wednesday morning. Veil said: "They talked in general terms about the organization of the Paris City Hall," which Chirac headed as mayor between 1977 and 1995. More hearings would follow, the lawyer said.

Chirac, whose term ended in May, defended himself in an article published in Le Monde on Wednesday. He said that he had made "legitimate and necessary" appointments while he was mayor. "There was never any personal enrichment." He wrote that so "many inaccuracies, often caricatures, sometimes excesses," had been circulating about this subject that he found it necessary to address himself to the French people.

Chirac, who will be 75 next week, is the first former president in modern France to be placed under formal examination by an investigating magistrate. Under French law this procedure is a step short of an indictment. It means that charges are taken seriously enough to be pursued by an investigating judge.

The legal step creates a new setback for Chirac who has been linked to other investigations connected to his 18-year tenure as Paris mayor. Soon after he lost his presidential immunity in July, he was heard by a judge in a different case investigating corruption in political party financing.

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Chirac apparently tried to soften the public impact of the hearing Wednesday. Le Monde said the former president had asked to be questioned in his own suite of offices along the Seine in Paris, as he was in July. But the judge assigned to the case by the French judiciary, Xavière Simeoni, insisted on summoning him to her chambers in the nearby Palace of Justice.

The two investigations are complex and may reveal as much about past political and business practices in France as about any decisions Chirac may have taken personally during his four-decade career as a politician.

In his article on the opinion page of Le Monde, he pointed out that he appointed many people while he held simultaneously the posts of mayor, member of Parliament for Corrèze, prime minister from 1986 to 1988 and head of the now defunct Rally for the Republic Party. Such overlapping responsibilities have been quite common in France, although periodically there is debate about reducing the practice.

Chirac said in his article said for the sake of efficiency, and to "devote myself better to Paris," he surrounded himself with special advisers, sometimes on temporary contracts. "I decided or authorized these because they were both legitimate and necessary."

But investigators who have been probing hiring practices at City Hall said they had found cases of people on the payroll who were doing jobs for Chirac's political party or for his associates. In one case, reported in Le Monde on Wednesday, investigators questioned a man assigned as personal driver to a senator and political associate of Chirac. The driver told investigators he had no explanation why the mayor himself had signed his work contract, Le Monde said.

Veil who accompanied his client at the Wednesday hearing said in a telephone interview that the investigation into "fraudulent misuse of public funds" involved" some 20 to 30 work contracts" which Chirac had approved or signed. He declined to give further details.

Dominique de Villepin, who was prime minister at the end of Chirac's presidency, is also under formal investigation in a separate case involving an alleged smear campaign against Nicolas Sarkozy who succeeded Chirac as president.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/...ope/chirac.php