Wire taps backfire on socialist government

For two weeks, French socialists had been rubbing their hands with glee. In the run-up to the first round of nationwide municipal elections on March 23rd, the conservative UMP was buried in an avalanche of politico-financial scandals.

UMP leader Jean-François Copé was reported to have steered party contracts to his friends, who overcharged. Patrick Buisson, an adviser to former president Nicolas Sarkozy, had secretly recorded 280 hours of conversations at the Élysée. And it emerged that taps on the phones of Sarkozy and his lawyer led to an investigation for "violation of judicial secrecy" and "influence peddling."

But the wire taps backfired badly on the socialists on Tuesday night, when Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Justice Minister Christiane Taubira were "caught lying in flagrante", in the words of the UMP parliamentary group leader Christian Jacob.

Accused by the right of manipulating the justice system to hound Mr Sarkozy, socialist leaders had claimed they had known nothing of the wire taps before reading about them in Le Monde on March 7th, a version of events reconfirmed by Ms Taubira Monday evening.

Mr Ayrault, too, stuck to that version. “The president of the republic, justice minister, minister of the interior, prime minister are not informed of wire taps ordered by the judiciary,” he told a socialist group meeting on Tuesday.

The government must have learned of the imminent publication of a report by the Canard enchaîné that Taubira was informed of the wire taps on February 26th, and interior minister Manuel Valls received regular reports from the judiciary police under his orders – who are responsible for wire tapping – on the progress of the investigation. Mr Valls continues to deny knowing anything about the wire taps.

Mr Ayrault came clean on Tuesday night: “We were informed by the court when new facts were discovered and an investigation was opened [on February 26th],” Mr Ayrault admitted, adding that the executive branch “had no information about the content” of the taps.

The right went into rhetorical frenzy, denouncing a “French Watergate” and demanding Ms Taubira’s resignation. “The rule of law is in question,” UMP leader Copé said, adding that President François Hollande must “explain himself before the French about this affair of state involving political espionage”.

Five hundred French lawyers, outraged that the telephone of their colleague Thierry Herzog, Mr Sarkozy's lawyer, had been tapped, had earlier demanded an explanation from Mr Hollande. "By virtue of the separation of powers", Mr Hollande replied in writing, he "could not intervene in any manner in a judiciary case that is under way."

It was the national financial court, established by the socialist government on February 1st, that opened the new investigation into Mr Sarkozy's affairs. "Today, no fewer than 10 investigating magistrates – nearly the entire staff of the Paris financial investigation team – are at [Sarkozy's] heels in seven different investigations," the Canard enchaîné reported.

Despite the prime minister’s admission and the revelation that she was informed about the wire taps on February 26th – not March 7th – Ms Taubira said yesterday: “No, I did not lie. No, I will not resign.”

It was François Falletti, the Paris prosecutor general whom Ms Taubira last month tried to sack, who informed her office of the taps on Sarkozy’s phones. Mr Falletti was merely obeying the minister’s instructions. Last January 31st, Ms Taubira demanded she be informed of all cases involving well known suspects or victims.

Mr Herzog, Sarkozy’s lawyer, had purchased a mobile phone for Mr Sarkozy under the name of Paul Bismuth, a former classmate who now lives in Israel. Mr Bismuth has threatened to sue for “identity theft”.