Former French PM guilty of corruption

2.00pm - By JOHN LICHFIELD

In a stinging reverse for President Jacques Chirac, the former French prime minister Alain Juppe was banned from office for a decade yesterday after being found guilty of corrupt party financing.

M. Juppe, 58, mayor of Bordeaux and head of the president's centre-right party, the UMP, had been expected to run for the presidency in 2007 if M.
Chirac, 71, should decide against running again.

M. Juppe will now be banned from doing so - and stripped of his mayorship and party presidency - unless he succeeds in reversing his conviction on
appeal. The former prime minister and foreign minister, one of M. Chirac's closest alies for 28 years, may decide to abandon politics while the two
year appeal process goes ahead. He is expected to make an announcement next week.

A court in Nanterre in the Paris suburbs found him guilty yesterday of "taking illegal advantage" of public funds. He was given an 18 months
suspended jail sentence and ordered to serve the mandatory ten year
suspension from elected office.

More than a score of other serving or former party colleagues or associates
of M. Juppe and M. Chirac were given suspended prison terms.

Yesterday's judgement was a serious blow to President Chirac and a further
boost to the rising fortunes of the frenetic interior minister, Nicolas
Sarkozy, who has declared himself to be the true future of centre-right
politics in France.

With M. Juppe (Prime Minister from 1995-7) out of the way, or wounded, M.
Sarkozy may bid for the leadership of the UMP party in November. The legal
conviction of M. Juppe also amounts to a political indictment of M. Chirac.

The offences for which M. Juppe was convicted - embezzling the money of
Paris taxpayers by putting seven party officials on the town-hall pay-roll
- occurred while M. Chirac was mayor of the French capital. It is generally
accepted that the President would also have stood trial last October if he
had not been protected by his immunity as head of state.

During the trial, M. Juppe denied all knowledge of the so-called "fictitious
jobs" on the town-hall pay-roll until just before he took steps to correct
the situation in 1993. One of the bogus town hall jobs was his own
secretary at the headquarters of M. Chirac's old RPR party, which has now
been merged into the wider centre-right party, the UMP.

The prosecution argued that it was inconceivable that M. Juppe, who was
assistant mayor for town hall finances, and also secretary general of the
RPR, did not know that tax-payers money was being used to fund the party.

It was alleged that this was just a small part of a wider scam, involving
scores of RPR officials whose salaries were paid either by the town hall or
by private companies who had been promised town hall contracts. That, in
turn, was just one of a half-dozen alleged illegal schemes to raise funds
for the RPR, several of which are still being investigated.

The party was founded by M. Chirac in 1976 and was is personal, political
war-horse through three presidential campaigns, until he finally reached
the Elysee Palace in 1995.

M. Juppe's lawyer, Francis Szpiner, who is also President Chirac's lawyer,
said after the court that the verdict was "incorrect and unjust". He
accused the judges of trying to place the justice system "above politics".
His remark caused some amusement. For many years, French people have
suspected that politicians regard themselves as above the justice system.


- INDEPENDENT