Jobs For The Boys: Chirac Questioned By Judge

 HOW  should political parties be funded?

Former French President Jacques Chirac is being questioned by a magistrate probing a party funding scandal dating back to his time as mayor of Paris.

Mr Chirac, 74, is being interviewed as an assisted witness, which means he could eventually face criminal charges.

The inquiry is looking into a fake jobs scheme that was used to finance Mr Chirac’s conservative RPR party during his time as mayor in 1977-1995.

Mr Chirac has denied wrongdoing, saying party funding lacked legal clarity.

He denies:

The former president’s close ally and one-time prime minister, Alain Juppe, was convicted in the scandal in 2004 and banned from politics for a year.

Prosecutors said housing officials received bribes from businessmen and that some of the money went to Mr Chirac’s Rally for the Republic (RPR).

In a statement published in the French daily Le Monde, Mr Chirac said he found it “very normal” to answer questions about the party-funding affair.

He said there had been “seven years of tentative moves” between an initial law in 1988 and a third in 1995 to “arrive at a good judicial framework” on political funding.

Anorak

Posted: 19th, July 2007 | In: Twitterings Comment (1) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink