KEY POINTS:
The former French President Jacques Chirac will soon be questioned by magistrates on his alleged use of an illegal bank account in Japan with a possible South Pacific link.
Although Chirac also faces questioning on other alleged financial irregularities, his mysterious Japanese dealings over many years appear to
have risen to the top of the pile of his legal worries.
Two judges investigating the Clearsteam Affair - false allegations of corruption against French public figures, including the new President Nicolas Sarkozy - will seek to question Chirac in the near future, the newspaper Liberation said yesterday.
Jean-Marie d'Huy and Henri Pons, investigating the Clearstream affair, have unearthed new evidence suggesting that Chirac had an undeclared account at a Japanese bank in the 1990s. The evidence suggests that the account may once have received funds from Gaston Flosse, the former President of French Polynesia who is an old Chirac ally. Both Chirac and Flosse have denied these allegations, leaked to the French press. The former President has always denied having opened a bank account in Japan.
Flosse was found guilty last year of illegally using his political influence to bale out a struggling hotel owned by his son.
Although seemingly minor in themselves, investigators believe that the Japanese-Polynesian connections may help to explain a whole web of mysterious financial dealings.
A note from the French external security service, the DGSE, first unearthed by the investigators last year, implies that Chirac once had seven billion yen ($81 million) in an account opened at Tokyo Sowa bank in 1992. The bank, owned by a since ruined Japanese businessman, Shoichi Osada, has now ceased trading. Osada was a friend of Chirac's for decades.
The two judges are reported to have found new evidence linking Chirac to the Japanese bank account in private notes kept by a former intellgence agent, General Philippe Rondot. Rondot was one of the - innocent - prime actors in the Clearstream affair. He was asked by former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in 2004, to investigate fake illegal bank accounts supposedly held by French public figures, including Sarkozy, in Luxembourg. The general's records have now been seized in their entirety by the judges.
As President, Chirac was immune from prosecution and even from investigation. Now he is almost certain to be questioned about his alleged role in illegal party funding in the 1990s when he was Mayor of Paris. The alleged Japanese bank account is part of a quite separate investigation.
The former President is a great Japanophile, a fan of Sumo wrestling and an expert on Japanese art. He has visited 54 times in 37 years.
While sharing power with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin between 1997 and 2002 Chirac became convinced that Jospin was using the security services to investigate his dealings in Japan. Once Jospin left office in 2002, Chirac fired the head of the external security service, the DGSE. It later emerged that the DGSE had undertaken a brief investigation in Japan, although not at Jospin's request.
- INDEPENDENT
