FRANCE: This has not been a good year for president Jacques Chirac. After the defeat of the referendum on the European constitution in May, and a minor stroke last month, the French leader suffered another setback yesterday when his former right-hand man, Michel Roussin, was convicted of corruption.
The offences were committed to finance the RPR party, of which Mr Chirac was then president. Mr Roussin was Chirac's top aide from 1984 until 1993, during which time Mr Chirac was mayor of Paris, prime minister of France, then mayor of Paris again. In 1993-94, Mr Roussin was the cabinet minister who dealt with former French colonies.
Mr Roussin was one of 43 people convicted in France's biggest illegal party financing scandal, involving €70 million in kick-backs from public works contracts in the Île de France (Paris) region between 1989 and 1995.
After a seven-year investigation and a seven-month trial, only four of the 47 co-defendants, who included politicians, civil servants and building contractors, were cleared. Mr Chirac's presidential immunity prevented his being called as a witness or charged, but as several French journalists noted, "his shadow hung over the trial." In its 568-page judgment, the tribunal said that Mr Roussin was at the centre of the corruption scandal and "could not have acted on his own initiative, but willingly assumed his role."
Twenty-three witnesses identified Mr Roussin as the organiser of the kick-back system. The deputy prosecutor Henri Génin called him "the major-domo of city hall, whose mouth was sewn shut." In his summing up last June, Mr Génin mentioned "the empty seats" at the trial, which he compared to "prie-dieus in churches where the most illustrious parishoners do not attend services."
Legal experts said yesterday's sentences were extremely light, considering that under the French penal code, Mr Roussin and his co-defendants risked up to 10 years in prison. A judiciary source explained this by the fact that the prosecutor was the de facto number two in the justice ministry in the previous right-wing government.
Only one of the 47, an official from the Green Party, was jailed (for one year) because he accepted the equivalent of €305,000 in cash for personal use.
Mr Roussin (66) was sentenced to a four-year suspended prison sentence, a €50,000 fine and a five-year suspension of his civic rights.
Two other former right-wing cabinet ministers, Michel Giraud (76) and Guy Drut (54) were also fined and received suspended prison sentences. Mr Giraud was minister of labour from 1993 until 1995. Mr Drut, who was sports minister from 1995 until 1997, was convicted of receiving a salary for a bogus job.