Police searched the home of Dominique de Villepin, the former French Prime Minister, yesterday as judges appeared close to charging him with conspiring to implicate Nicolas Sarkozy, now the President, in a corruption scandal. Criminal charges are thought likely after examining judges unearthed new evidence that appears to put Mr de Villepin, 56, close to the heart of the so-called Clearstream affair.

The scandal, under investigation since 2005, involves forged bank records that suggested falsely that Mr Sarkozy and other senior figures had received big bribes in the sale of French warships to Taiwan.

Mr de Villepin was serving as Foreign and then Interior Minister and Mr Sarkozy, his rival for the future presidency, was Finance, then Interior Minister.

The affair poisoned the already strained relations between Mr de Villepin, the protégé of Mr Chirac, and the President’s mutinous subordinate, who was intent on succeeding him.

Investigating judges and police arrived yesterday afternoon at the expensive Paris apartment building where Mr de Villepin lives.

They were acting on material that was extracted last week from erased data on an intelligence officer’s computer. This added to evidence that Mr Chirac had been briefed on the affair at the time, according to leaked judicial transcripts. Two weeks ago the former President refused to obey a judicial summons for questioning over the case. His lawyers argued that he was immune from inquiries into any acts undertaken during his presidency.

Mr de Villepin, a career civil servant who lost his government post after Mr Sarkozy’s election in May, insisted that he had no role in circulating the false bank data. “In response to the false allegations of recent days . . . Dominique de Villepin repeats that he never sought to investigate nor compromise any political figure in the Clearstream affair,” his lawyers said.

The former Prime Minister also repeated earlier denials that he had discussed Mr Sarkozy’s apparent implication with Mr Chirac at the time.

However, Mr de Villepin will now seek to be an “assisted witness”, a status that enables suspects to be accompanied by their lawyers at judicial interviews, they said.

The new evidence, leaked in detail to the press, consists of computer files written in mid2004 by General Philippe Rondot, an intelligence officer. In them he reported on contacts at the time with Jean-Louis Gergorin, a vice-president of the EADS aerospace and defence group. Mr Gergorin has since admitted sending the Clearstream bank lists anonymously to an investigating judge in 2004.

In a note dated May 26, General Rondot reports that Mr Gergorin had told him that he had “received instructions from Dominique de Villepin and had decided to speak to the judge”. It continues: “In an interview between Jean-Louis Gergorin and Dominique de Villepin on May 19, the latter was apparently jubilant but also concerned not to have his name appear in the affair.” General Rondot confirmed to judges on Wednesday that the notes were an accurate record of his contacts, judicial sources said.

Mr Gergorin, who lost his EADS job, has been charged with conspiracy, along with Imad Lahoud, a computer expert, who is suspected of producing the false records. The judges are to cross-examine Mr Gergorin and Mr Lahoud over the Rondot notes, which were retrieved from a hard drive by technicians, despite their having been erased.

The case is unlikely to reach any conclusion for at least a year. Mr Sarkozy is said, however, to be determined to have it pursued to the end.

Mr de Villepin, who is a part-time historian, has entitled his new book on Napoleon – regarded as an oblique attack on Mr Sarkozy’s Napoleonic ambitions – The Dark Sun of Power.

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