Dumbfounded first lady of Paris defends her record

In her pinstriped black suit and white beads, Mrs Xaviere Tiberi, wife of the Mayor of Paris, looked small and helpless as she stood at the witness stand, despite her 63 years of age.

"I am absolutely dumbfounded," the first lady of Paris said yesterday after Gaullist Senator Xavier Dugoin confirmed that he "hired" Mrs Tiberi at the request of her husband, Jean, that her 10-month "employment" by the Essonne General Council - for which she was paid Ffr205,000 - was indeed fictional.

The judges are now weighing Mrs Tiberi's word against Senator Dugoin's. "I did nothing wrong," Mrs Tiberi protested. She had started working the day after her contract was delivered to the Paris town hall, she claimed. "I bought books and I consulted the atlas and the La-rousse (encyclopaedia). I contacted learned people and discussed it with them. I met ambassadors . . ."

Why, her job studying co-operation among French-speaking peoples was so demanding that she was barely able to help her husband for those 10 months! The pastry-maker's daughter from Corte raised her hand as if to ask permission to address the judge. People had told so many lies about her; they said her 36-page report was full of spelling errors; the mistakes were only "typos".

It was an amazing performance, in which Mrs Tiberi transformed herself from an ingenue into a vengeful mafioso, crossing her ankles and slouching over the lectern, her pinstriped suit suddenly looking like a gangster's costume. She narrowed her eyes to look at Mr Dugoin, the prosecutor, the lawyer for the civil plaintiffs. "This is shameful, pure shame," she shouted. "I know Muslims, I know Jews. I am Corsican. You don't attack a man through his wife. When Xavier Dugoin speaks of friendship with Jean Tiberi, I am dumbfounded. A friend of my husband? Never!"

Mr Tiberi, it seems, has few friends left. France-Soir newspaper yesterday published a front page photograph of the mayor ensconced in a gilt chair with the headline "Partez, Monsieur Tiberi." Some of his fellow rightwing politicians also demanded Mr Tiberi's resignation. More lenient Gaullists say he cannot possibly stand for re-election.

And yet no one in the Evry courtroom spoke the name of Mr Jacques Chirac, who was, after all, the Mayor of Paris in 1994 when Mr Tiberi - then Mr Chirac's first deputy - asked Mr Dugoin to pay his wife a monthly salary. Mr Dugoin confirmed the existence of a system whereby officials from Mr Chirac's RPR party gave fake government jobs to each other's relatives and supporters.

But of the 12 judicial investigations into murky dealings at Paris town hall, those involving vote-rigging in municipal elections - while Mr Chirac was mayor - most frighten the Elysee Palace. If it were proven that the President was a party to election fraud, there might be calls for his resignation. A principal witness in the vote-rigging scandal says he has received threats and that his car was vandalised.