Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin goes on trial today for allegedly plotting a smear campaign against French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris’ most politically charged case in years.
Dubbed the trial of the decade, the judicial drama features a cast of powerful players in politics, industry and intelligence circles, beginning with Sarkozy, who is a civil plaintiff in the case.
A suave diplomat best remembered for leading the charge against the Iraq war at the UN, Villepin is accused of conspiring to slander Sarkozy at a time when the pair were waging a vicious battle to succeed Jacques Chirac as president.
PHOTO: EPA
The case dates back to 2004 and centers on a list — later proved to have been fabricated — of account holders at the Clearstream financial clearing house who allegedly received kickbacks from the sale of French frigates to Taiwan.
One name on the bogus list was that of Sarkozy, then Chirac’s finance and interior minister, who suspects the president’s chosen heir Villepin of using the list to try to torpedo his bid for the presidency.
Villepin, 55, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and maintains that the case would have never gone to trial had it not been for Sarkozy’s “meddling” in the judicial process.
The trial is shaping up as a showdown between the two men, whose mutual hatred is legendary in French political circles.
But it will also cast light on the murky dealings of French intelligence and of one of the world’s top aerospace companies, EADS.
A former EADS vice president and Villepin ally, Jean-Louis Gergorin is also on trial as is the former head of an EADS research center, Imad Lahoud, who has reportedly confessed to falsifying the list.
Also on trial are management consultant Florian Bourges, who was accused of stealing Clearstream documents, and journalist Denis Robert, who broke the story.
Villepin faces up to five years in jail and a 45,000 euro (US$66,000) fine if convicted of “complicity in slander, complicity in the use of forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust.”
Villepin has waged a media offensive in recent weeks, accusing Sarkozy of being “a bit twisted” for insisting that the Clearstream affair was a plot to sabotage his bid for the presidency.
Sarkozy reportedly vowed to “hang up whoever did this on a butcher’s hook.”
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS