Former French prime minister Edouard Balladur and an ex-defence minister are to stand trial over the so-called Karachi affair - a submarine deal with Pakistan in the mid-1990s which allegedly involved secret commissions.
Under that deal Mr Balladur, now aged 90, allegedly got funding for his failed 1995 bid for the presidency.
His then defence minister, François Léotard, also faces trial.
Both men categorically deny any wrongdoing.
In 2002 a bombing in Karachi killed 11 French engineers. There are suspicions that the car bombing, which wrecked a bus, was an act of revenge after President Jacques Chirac had ordered payment of the secret arms deal commissions to stop.
Attorney-general François Molins announced that Mr Balladur and Mr Léotard would go before a special tribunal for present and past government officials accused of wrongdoing.
The allegation is that Mr Balladur approved payment of the commissions to intermediaries in the sale of three submarines to Pakistan, and that from them so-called "retro-commissions" came back to France to fund his presidential bid.
The kickbacks are estimated to have cost 13m francs (almost €2m, or £1.8m, in today's money).