Chirac denies all knowledge of bribes to party

The French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, last night denied any knowledge of an agreement in the early 1990s between French political parties to share bribes on public works contracts. Mr Chirac said he would refuse to be questioned by an investigating magistrate and blamed the media for creating "show justice".

According to witnesses who were involved in the fraud, the lion's share of Ffr 600 million (£72 million) in kickbacks went to Mr Chirac's RPR party. The money represented 2 per cent of all construction contracts for lycees (secondary schools) in the Ile-de-France region between 1990 and 1996.

"I didn't know it, for one simple reason. As president of the RPR I never got involved in the financing of the party," Mr Chirac said in a live interview on France's main television news programme. The President had come under intense pressure to talk publicly about the scandal since the former treasurer of his party and his former chef de cabinet, Mr Michel Roussin, were arrested in the last week of November. Both were released after questioning.

Mr Chirac twice reminded the interviewer that as prime minister in 1988, he was the first French politician to address the "dangerous drift" in party financing. "It is very difficult to distinguish between what was legal and what wasn't", he added. He rejected demands that parties pay back funds "given" by construction companies before a 1995 law forbidding business contributions.

This autumn, in a videocassette recorded before his death from cancer, a former RPR fundraiser, Mr Jean-Claude Mery, claimed Mr Chirac was present when he handed Ffr 5 million in cash to Mr Roussin. The President said he was "stupefied" and "deeply hurt" by the allegation.

If summoned by a judge, Mr Chirac said he would refuse to testify because as President he is "the guarantor of the continuity of the state". He wished he could testify, so that he could "wring the neck of these rumours and insinuations. . . I am the permanent victim in this affair."

Mr Chirac blamed the media for giving the public and the international community the impression that France is a corrupt country. "Today these practices no longer occur," he said. "There is no moral or political crisis in France."

He defended France's European presidency, saying the treaty concluded in Nice on Monday will go down in history as a good agreement.

Regarding the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin's autonomy plan for Corsica, Mr Chirac said he would oppose allowing the Corsican assembly to adapt French legislation, and was against the obligatory teaching of the Corsican language in schools.