French ex-PM Dominique de Villepin cleared of smear campaign

French appeal court upholds acquittal of former PM on charges of slandering Nicolas Sarkozy in Clearstream scandal A Paris appeal court has cleared the former prime minister Dominique de Villepin of running a dirty-tricks smear campaign against Nicolas Sarkozy. The verdict draws a line under the Clearstream affair, a marathon courtroom battle that exposed the seething hatred between the two biggest rivals on the French right. Sarkozy had accused De Villepin of smearing him over alleged acts of money laundering through the Luxembourg bank Clearstream. In June 2004, a French judge received an anonymous poison-pen letter accusing a number of senior politicians and business figures of laundering money through hidden foreign accounts. On the list was Sarkozy, then finance minister and contender to succeed Jacques Chirac as president. Paris braced itself for what seemed to be the corruption scandal of the decade, but the judge quickly established the accusations were false. Sarkozy accused De Villepin of deliberately using the bogus scandal to smear him in the run-up to the presidential race in 2007. The appeal court upheld an earlier decision to acquit De Villepin of charges of complicity in slander. They dismissed a state prosecutor’s request for a 15-month suspended sentence. The acquittal was a setback for Sarkozy, who had been the key plaintiff in the trial, and who once said he would like to hang De Villepin from a butcher’s hook . The Élysée said he would not comment. After the verdict De Villepin, who had complained that Sarkozy was pursuing a vendetta, praised “the independence of our justice system which resisted political pressure”. He said he had come out of this “ordeal” stronger and “more determined than ever to serve the French”. The acquittal in theory clears the path for De Villepin to run against Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election. Best known for his stance against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, De Villepin quit Sarkozy’s ruling rightwing UMP party and set up his own small political grouping, République Solidaire. De Villepin, a Gaullist positioned on the centre-right, has been a strong critic of Sarkozy’s rightwing drift. But his political support base remains limited and his poll ratings are low. It is unclear whether he has enough support among politicians to muster a campaign. The six-year Clearstream battle was unprecedented in French modern history. A trial, appeal and retrial involved scores of plaintiffs and witnesses from the highest levels of French politics, including senior spies and businessmen, and damaged the credibility of the French political class. France Europe Nicolas Sarkozy Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 14, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.