Video-tape 'from the grave' unleashes political scandal in France

CATHERINE FIELD gives a lie to the old adage that dead men tell no tales

PARIS - There are lies, there's a videotape - the only thing missing is the sex. But in a sleazy scandal such as this one, it cannot be too far away.

The French are calling it the videotape from the grave - a filmed testimony by a crooked wheeler-dealer, now deceased, in which he pulled the cover off a festering pit of corruption in the neo-Gaullist RPR party.

By an astonishing series of twists worthy of a real movie, the tape has implicated a whole range of powerful, ego-driven men - and with the key witness inconveniently in his grave, they are struggling to prove their innocence.

The cast includes Jacques Chirac, proud, ambitious head of state; former economy and finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was premier Lionel Jospin's right-hand man; candyfloss-haired fashion guru Karl Lagerfeld; and even the French tax authorities, accused of being used as a political pawn.

For years, Chirac's RPR (Rally for the Republic) has been at the centre of allegations about slush funds and illegal fund-raising.

But the publication by Le Monde last week of a transcript of the videotape made by party fixer Jean-Claude Mery took the charges to a shocking new level.

He alleged that Chirac, who was Mayor of Paris at the time, attended a meeting in 1986 in which five million francs ($1.53 million) in cash was handed over in illegal contributions from building firms which had been given cushy contracts for city housing.

Chirac furiously denied the charge, insinuating that it was an attempt to destabilise him in the runup to the 2002 elections. And within just three days, he was able to go on the offensive when it was revealed that the original of the tape was in the possession of Strauss-Kahn, one of the darlings of Jospin's Socialist Party.

According to L'Express magazine, Strauss-Kahn had been given the cassette in 1999 by a friend and tax lawyer, Alain Belot.

In return for this priceless nugget of dirt on the head of state, L'Express said, Strauss-Kahn agreed to pressure tax authorities into slashing a 300-million-franc tax bill owed by Lagerfeld, one of Belot's clients, to just 50 million francs.

Strauss-Kahn admits that he was handed the cassette but says he never bothered to watch it and has no idea where the tape is now.

He also denies that he manipulated Lagerfeld's tax bill in exchange for the tape.

But these assertions have met with public derision, with the almost universal suspicion that Strauss-Kahn would have leaked the tape when the moment was right.

A brilliant economist with a cultivated manner of lazy intelligence and a beautiful wife - TV celebrity Anne Sinclair - Strauss-Kahn was France's rising star.

He had his eyes on the mayoralty of Paris, which is up for election next year, and there was talk of his succeeding to the premiership if Jospin ever won the presidency.

Strauss-Kahn's headlong fall began last November, when he quit as minister after being caught up in another scandal involving false bills to claim 603,000 francs in fees for advising a student organisation in a business deal at a time before he was a politician.

Mired in a climate of plotting and back-stabbing worthy of the Borgias, France's cohabitation - the sharing of power between the President and Prime Minister when they are of different parties - now has the look of tribal war.

What would help clear the air is an explanation why Mery made the tape - and the whereabouts of the original.

The speculation is that Mery made the recording to try to pressure the RPR into having magistrates drop an investigation into his affairs, or to secure hush money from the party. But dead men do not talk: Mery died of cancer in June 1999.

As for the tape, only one copy of it, held by a freelance journalist who made the recording in May 1996, has been found.

To Strauss-Kahn's own chagrin, a search of his home has failed to turn up the original, a gap that can only fuel the cycle of rumour.

The affair is the latest cold shower for French morale after a year of strong economic growth and declining unemployment crowned by victory in the Euro 2000 football cup.

Just last Sunday, a referendum on reducing the presidential term of office from seven years to five was approved by an appallingly low turnout, of just three voters in 10.

That was an emphatic snub to a proposal that had already been decided by the Government and rubber-stamped by Parliament with little debate.

The latest affair only rams home a message for many: that the political class is greedy, hypocritical and alienated from the public, and that the tax system is manipulable by those with clout.

In the past, such discontent at France's rulers frequently bubbled over in the form of strikes, demonstrations, blockades or worse, as interest groups battled to get their way.

Jospin had believed that this was one violent tradition that could be consigned to the history books and replaced with reasonable debate. But with discontent seething all around him, this seems to have been a rash hope.