FORMER FRENCH interior minister Charles Pasqua, an erstwhile ally of Jacques Chirac, went on trial yesterday charged with corruption while he was a government minister in the 1990s.
Mr Pasqua (83), who fought in the French Resistance during the second World War, faces three charges related to alleged bribes and kickbacks during his second term as interior minister from 1993 to 1995. He is the sixth former minister to stand trial in a special court which was created in 1993 to try politicians accused of wrongdoing while in government.
Mr Pasqua is accused of benefiting from financial support in return for awarding a casino licence to a friend in 1994, and of links to bribes accepted by his colleagues in two business deals.
He has already received an 18-month suspended prison sentence for the casino case after a court convicted him of funding his election campaign for the European Parliament with proceeds of the sale of the casino.
Once a major figure on the French right, Pasqua helped Jacques Chirac set up the RPR party in 1976, but now says he is the victim of a plot designed by Chirac in 2000 to smear his erstwhile ally and scupper his presidential ambitions.
In October, Mr Pasqua was sentenced to a year in jail for his role in illegal arms sales to Angola in the 1990s. He has appealed the conviction.
The latest trial will be closely watched, not least because Mr Pasqua was once a mentor to President Nicolas Sarkozy, and a number of high-profile senior staff at the Elysée Palace are due to give evidence.
Among them are Claude Guéant, who is secretary-general at the Elysée and was a senior member of Mr Pasqua’s office, and the president’s influential adviser and speechwriter, Henri Guaino.
Mr Pasqua emerged as a law-and-order conservative in the 1980s, declaring that he wanted to “terrorise the terrorists”.
He served as a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004, and was then elected to the French senate.
Judges are due to rule on the case on April 30th. Mr Pasqua faces a sentence of up to 10 years in jail but he will be able to appeal and is partially protected, as a senator, by parliamentary immunity.