PARIS (AP) -- A French judge questioned former President Jacques
Chirac for more than four hours Thursday in an investigation into a
party financing scandal that dates to his time as mayor of Paris,
his lawyer said.
It was the first time a French president has undergone questioning
under such conditions, and marks a sobering point in Chirac's
four-decade political career.
The party financing investigation is the most potent of a string of
potential legal problems the 74-year-old Chirac faces now that he
no longer has presidential immunity. It remains unclear whether
Chirac, who turned over power to Nicolas Sarkozy in May, will ever
be tried in this or other legal cases implicating him.
Chirac was questioned as a material witness in his Paris offices by
investigating Judge Alain Philibeaux, said Chirac's lawyer Jean
Veil, who was also present. The questioning started at 9:15 a.m.
(0715 GMT) and ended at 1:30 p.m. (1130 GMT).
"The former head of state explained himself very completely, very
calmly, in a climate of great courtesy and simplicity," Veil told
reporters outside Chirac's building afterward.
The judge has been waiting for years to talk to Chirac himself
about how much he knew about the financing scandal, which has
already targeted several former colleagues of Chirac's.
The investigation concerns a fake jobs scheme used to finance
Chirac's conservative party RPR while he was mayor of Paris, from
1977-95. He was president from 1995 until May 16.
Investigators say RPR operatives were illegally on the Paris city
payroll in a scheme to help finance the party, and that the
equivalent of millions of euros (dollars) in salaries and fees were
doled out.
The RPR, or Rally for the Republic, was later replaced by the UMP,
or Union for a Popular Movement, which now dominates parliament and
Sarkozy's government.
Philibeaux's investigation turned up a 1993 letter in which Chirac
requested a raise for a secretary who was paid by City Hall -- but
who actually worked at party headquarters.
Former Prime Minister Alain Juppe, a close Chirac ally, was
convicted in the case in 2004 and given a 14-month suspended prison
sentence and a yearlong ban from politics.
Under French law, a material witness falls between a simple witness
and a suspect. The material witness is not formally under
investigation and has the right to a lawyer during questioning, but
can later face charges if investigating magistrates find "serious
or concordant signs" of an infraction or a crime.
Chirac wrote a column in Le Monde newspaper released Thursday
explaining that France long had no judicial rules laying out a
framework for party financing.
He said France passed several laws from 1988 to 1995 as it
attempted to clarify the rules. "In a few years, we had to pass
from a system of customs and arrangements to a regime clearly laid
out by the law," Chirac wrote.
"In a spirit of clarity and responsibility, I want to remind the
magistrates of this context, without which nothing can be
understood," Chirac wrote.
Chirac also said that, starting in 1984, he pushed to create a body
to guarantee transparency in the RPR's financing.
Chirac could also face questioning in an offshoot investigation of
the jobs case, as well as in two unrelated corruption
investigations dating to before his time as president.
