Word: chirac
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When asked in a 2001 television interview about the numerous corruption allegations that had dogged him throughout his years of public service, then-President Jacques Chirac waved the notion away as nothing but hot air. That changed on Friday, however, when a judge ordered Chirac to stand trial for alleged abuse of public funds while he was mayor of Paris just before his election to the Elys...
...Although Chirac has been the subject of multiple investigations relating to his 1977-1995 tenure as mayor, the inquiry headed by magistrate Xavière Simeoni is the first to come even close to prosecution. The conclusion of Simeoni's nearly decade-long inquiry marks a dramatic moment for the nation - if the case does go to court, Chirac would be the first former head of state to stand trial since collaborationist leader Phillipe Pétain after World War II. He would also be the first ever to face a corruption trial. (See pictures of World War II movies...
...case focuses on a false employment scheme that Chirac was allegedly involved in toward the end of his time in the mayor's office from 1994-1995. Chirac and members of his City Hall staff are suspected of having created nearly 500 fictional consulting jobs for members of Chirac's conservative party - a way of paying people for political work out of public coffers. Twenty-one of these suspicious positions are cited in Simeoni's dossier. Chirac was constitutionally banned from giving testimony in the case while he was president from 1995-2007, but he admitted after leaving office that...
...Reaction from Chirac's office was swift. In a statement released Friday morning, it said the former president was "serene" and "determined to prove in court that none of the jobs still being debated were fake." Chirac also made it clear he wished to be treated "like any other citizen before the law." (See pictures of Paris expanding...
...political feuding goes back more than a decade. In 1995, Sarkozy betrayed longtime mentor Jacques Chirac by throwing his support behind a rival conservative candidate in the presidential election. Chirac won, named Villepin, his former campaign director, as his Elysée chief of staff and banished Sarkozy to a humiliating political exile. Sarkozy's punishment finally ended in 2002 when Chirac, eager to exploit the younger man's well-known hard-line attitude on law and order, tapped him as Interior Minister. Sarkozy's efforts there and in later Cabinet posts boosted his popularity just as he was consolidating...