Former French President Jacques Chirac was on Thursday given a two-year suspended prison sentence for embezzling public funds when he was mayor of Paris to finance his political party and advisors for his presidential election campaign strategy.
Chirac, 79, is the first former head of state to stand trial in France since that of the leader of the country's wartime collaborationist Vichy government, Marshal Philippe Pétain, in 1945. Under the French constitution, serving presidents are immune from criminal prosecution.
Magistrates of the 11th Paris criminal court (chambre correctionnelle), presided by Judge Dominique Pauthe, found he had been the knowing initiator, the principle driver and main beneficiary of a system that diverted Paris taxpayers' money to pay for staff who served his political party and ambitions while they were officially on the Paris City Hall payroll.
A group of City Hall employees, some of whom never set foot in the building, were engaged in working for Chirac's now-dissolved Rally for the Republic party, the RPR, and in preparing his - ultimately successful - 1995 presidential election bid.
The former president, whose doctors have attested suffers from a degenerative neurological condition that causes memory lapses, had not attended the earlier trial and similarly was not in court on Thursday to hear the verdict. Seven of the nine other defendants were also convicted, with sentences limited to suspended prison terms.
They included Jean de Gaulle, grandson of General Charles de Gaulle, employed as a special advisor to Chirac for African affairs and paid as a City Hall employee, who was given a three-month suspended prison sentence. Former Force Ouvrière union leader Marc Blondel was convicted but escaped a sentence. He had obtained from Chirac a bodyguard paid by the capital's municipal services.
Among the two who were acquitted was former mayoral chief-of-staff, Michel Roussin, who said Chirac had "assumed" his responsibility.
The current socialist-run Paris City hall controversially dropped its civil suit against Chirac in August 2010 after the former president and the country's ruling UMP party, created from the dissolved RPR, paid the city back 2.2 million euros in compensation. The refund was made with Chirac insisting he had committed no criminal offence.
Chirac was mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995, save the two years he served as prime minister between 1986 and 1988. He served two terms as French president, being first elected in 1995 and again in 2002. He was succeeded by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.
The verdict on Thursday followed 13 years of judicial procedures, beginning with a civil suit lodged by a Parisian taxpayer in 1998. In 2004, while Chirac was president, several other defendants cited in connection with the case were convicted, notably the current French foreign affairs minister Alain Juppé who served Chirac at the Paris City Hall. Juppé was given a 14-month suspended sentence for his role in the scam, effectively ending his political career until he was recalled to government earlier this year by Sarkozy.
Juppé was called as a key witness to Chirac's trial on September 15th, but at the last minute failed to appear. His lawyer, Francis Szpiner, told the court that foreign minister Juppé was required "to fulfill his obligations" by accompanying President Sarkozy on an official visit to Libya with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
In their summary of the verdict reached against Chirac, the panel of three judges found that "by his deliberate action, using 19 posts that were totally or partially fictive, Jacques Chirac failed to meet the demands of probity that weigh on public figures in charge of managing funds or assets that are placed under their responsibility, with contempt towards the general interests of Parisians."
(A text, in French, of the judges' ruling can be found by clicking here, while the complete texts concerning all the verdicts can be found in the 'Boîte Noire' box, bottom of this page).
Chirac faced a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a 150,000-euro fine, but the court said it had decided to hand down a more lenient sentence after taking into consideration: the time that had elapsed since the crime was committed, the intervening refund that had been made, the decision by Paris City Hall to drop its civil party case against him, the absence of personal enrichment, the age of the defendant, his poor health and the fact that he had served two terms of office as president of France.
The judges, Dominique Pauthe, Cécile Louis-Loyant and Marina Lobry-Igelman, ignored the advice of the Paris public prosecutor's office that the charges against Chirac should be thrown out. That request followed previous attempts by public prosecutors and defence lawyers over recent years to block the case, causing long procedural delays. Public prosecutors in France are answerable to the political powers, beginning with the justice minister, while the judges are independent figures.
In an extraordinary move during the trial in September, prosecutors Michel Maes and Chantal de Leiris told the court that no crime had been committed, but there had been simply been a situation of "bad organization". De Leiris said "it is not a case of a system deliberately put in place with a fraudulent aim."
Chirac's lawyers, Georges Kiejman and Jean Veil, were clearly surprised by the verdict announced Thursday. "For those expecting the case to be thrown out or at least no penalty, the ruling could appear disappointing," said Kiejman. They gave no hint as to whether Chirac would lodge an appeal against the judgment.
French Green party candidate for the 2012 presidential elections, Eva Joly, a former examining magistrate who led several high-profile anti-corruption investigations, on Thursday called for Chirac to resign from his position on the French Constitutional Council, the Conseil constitutionnel, the country's highest constitutional authority. "This judgment reached after a veritable judicial marathon is the proof of the necessity and usefulness of an independent justice system and which judges all citizens on an equal footing," she said in a communiqué.
"Justice has been passed and should be passed so that no sentiment of impunity can be set in," commented Socialist Party candidate François Hollande, who has previously shown clemency in his comments about Chirac's misdeeds. He underlined the "delay with regard to the events" in reaching a judicial conclusion and said the ruling raised the question of reforming the legal status of serving French presidents.
Current mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, a Socialist Party veteran, said the judges' verdict confirmed the "sound basis of the procedure led by the municipality since 2001 to obtain the recognition and the reparation of the faults committed against the interests of the local authorities and Parisians." Delanoë was elected as mayor of Paris in 2001, ending 23 years of control of City Hall by Chirac and his political allies.
"I am not in the habit of commenting upon decisions of justice. I simply think that this one has come really too late, more than 20 years after the events," commented French Prime Minister François Fillon, speaking from Sao Paulo in Brazil where he is on an official visit. "In my opinion, it is a decision that won't cause a change in the personal [sic] relationship that exists between the French and Jacques Chirac."
President Sarkozy's office offered no official reaction to Chirac's conviction.
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English version: Graham Tearse