Mr Didier Schuller, a former Gaullist official, returned to Paris after seven years as a fugitive yesterday, creating anxiety in President Jacques Chirac's RPR that he may reveal information about illicit party financing in the run-up to presidential and legislative elections, writes Lara Marlowe, in Paris
"The return of Didier Schuller is the first act of the socialists' campaign," said Ms Michèle Alliot-Marie, the president of the RPR.
Mr Chirac's former prime minister Mr Alain Juppé earlier created a scandal by accusing Prime Minister Mr Lionel Jospin and the socialists of "attacking people by stirring up la merde".
Just before his return from the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic, Mr Schuller fired his lawyer, a Gaullist who is close to the Élysée Palace, and hired a legal adviser with ties to the socialists.
Left-wing newspapers have published frontpage headlines on the Schuller affair almost daily since the former official's son Antoine denounced him in an interview two weeks ago. Mr Antoine Schuller says his father was protected by freemasons in the police and judiciary. Mr Didier Schuller says he has returned to France to free his son from the influence of "a fascist sect".
Mr Schuller, a former councillor for the Hauts-de-Seine department, was director of the council housing authority there from 1986 until 1994. He is under investigation for embezzling public funds and influence peddling. Mr Schuller told Le Monde that the system which judges have been investigating since 1995 was not his own "but that of a party - the RPR..." For years, he added, "businesses that obtained public contracts from the council housing authority made contributions" to RPR election campaigns .
France's Supreme Court and Constitutional Council have granted President Chirac immunity from questioning or prosecution while he is in office. But scandals involving council housing, kickbacks on lycée contracts and fictitious government jobs for RPR workers appear to be harming Mr Chirac's popularity.
A book by Judge Eric Halphen, who resigned in frustration in January after years investigating the RPR's finances, will be published next month.
An opinion poll at the weekend showed Mr Chirac and Mr Jospin tied at 23 per cent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections, which will take place on April 21st. In the second round, on May 5th, 51 per cent of those polled said they would vote for Mr Chirac.
France issued an international warrant for Mr Schuller's arrest in the mid-1990s. He moved to the Bahamas, then Santo Domingo. The French foreign ministry began extradition proceedings this month, but Mr Schuller turned himself in rather than await arrest. If he dies in custody, he warned a Dominican weekly, it will be through murder, not suicide.