FORMER FRENCH foreign minister Dominique de Villepin went back on trial yesterday, accused of plotting to discredit his rival Nicolas Sarkozy and sabotage his campaign for the presidency in 2007.
A Paris court last year found there were no grounds to convict Mr Villepin of complicity to slander Mr Sarkozy in 2004, when the two men were manoeuvring to succeed Jacques Chirac as president, but a second trial was ordered after an appeal by the state prosecutor.
The changing political context has given new significance to the retrial, with Mr Villepin recently having launched his own centre-right party to challenge Mr Sarkozy’s dominance.
Supporters of the president, who is faring poorly in opinion polls with just a year to go before a presidential election, fear a Villepin candidacy could seriously undermine Mr Sarkozy’s chances of re-election.
The so-called Clearstream affair dates back to 2004, when an anonymous informant gave an investigating judge a list purporting to contain the names of politicians, businessmen and journalists who held secret bank accounts at the Luxembourg bank Clearstream.
The accounts were said to have been used for laundering kickbacks from the sale of French frigates to Taiwan.
The most prominent name on the list was Mr Sarkozy’s. Although the judge soon found that the allegations were false and the accounts did not exist, senior intelligence officers were said to have been told to investigate the matter.
Mr Sarkozy saw an attempt to damage him and, suspecting Mr Chirac and Mr Villepin of a plot, vowed to find out where the fraudulent lists had come from. He lodged a legal complaint, as did other figures wrongly accused.
Prosecutors said it was Mr Villepin who prompted the informant to pass on the list, even though he knew it to be false. However, in a ruling last January, Mr Villepin was cleared on all four counts: complicity to slander, to use forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust.
Mr Sarkozy was among the plaintiffs in the initial trial but is not this time round. A verdict is likely in the autumn, and the outcome could have an effect on next year’s election.
The president’s camp is concerned that increasing divisions on the right could split the vote. The latest opinion polls suggest Mr Villepin could secure up to 7 per cent of first-round votes compared to about 21 per cent for Mr Sarkozy.