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Jacques Chirac, the former President of France, was told yesterday that he faces possible criminal charges in a long-running saga of financial abuses during his 18-year tenure as Mayor of Paris and Gaullist party chief.

Mr Chirac, 74, became the first post-war French leader to be placed under formal investigation on suspicion of crime when he was summoned yesterday morning to the office of a judge enquiring into the use of city funds in the appointment of staff.

The case is one of half a dozen which sprang from investigations that began in 1999 into "la machine Chirac", the fortress-like city hall that the former president built up as his power base before he won the Elysee Palace in 1995. Continuing enquiries and completed trials have shown how millions of pounds of city and corporate funds were diverted for political ends during Mr Chirac's mayoral reign.

Mr Chirac, who denies wrongdoing, is said to have been suffering from depressed spirits since he left the presidency in May after four decades in high politics. He lives with Bernadette, his wife, in a large, borrowed apartment on the Left Bank. One of his retirement jobs, a seat on the state Constitutional Council, has been cast in doubt by his potential prosecution.

Some opponents cheered the judge's move. "After so many years of impunity, we have to hope that the distant date of the deeds will not be used to justify this being forgotten," said Yves Contassot, the Green party deputy to Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

Arnaud Montebourg, however, a Socialist party star who once campaigned for Mr Chirac's impeachment, said that it was too late to prosecute the old statesman.

A stream of city hall revelations stained Mr Chirac's image as President but did not prevent his re-election in 2002. Half a dozen of his former subordinates have been sentenced to suspended prison terms over affairs arising from his mayoral years, while his presidential immunity has until now shielded him from proceedings. Since leaving office he has become vulnerable to investigation in at least four cases.

Mr Chirac, who was summoned last July as a potential suspect in a parallel investigation, said that he had committed no offence when he appointed staff in the 1980s and early 1990s. Mayors were given broad latitutde to appoint staff in those days, and allegations of abuse now were malicious and unjustified, he said.

"Never were funds belonging to the City of Paris used for any other aim than on behalf of Parisian men and women," he wrote in an article for Le Monde newspaper.

"Never was there personal enrichment. Never was there a 'system'. I wanted or authorised these recruitments because they were both legitimate and necessary," he wrote.

Mr Chirac's lawyers said that investigators were concerned with about 20 staff positions, some which lasted only a few weeks, out of 400 appointments in the 40,000-strong city admininstration.

In his account, Mr Chirac acknowledged that he sometimes recruited people to his cabinet, or personal staff, to help them "when they were passing through difficult professional times". At one stage in Mr Chirac's city hall, his personal office had 150 employees.

Bernard Bled, a former senior official in the city hall, said that Mr Chirac, who was simultaneously Mayor and a rural MP and served for two years as Prime Minister, had never been closely involved in appointments. "Jacques Chirac never got involved in the detail... He is a rigorous, honest man. He simply inherited a way of doing things."

The 74-year-old becomes the 21st suspect in the case to face charges. Former Prime Minister Alain Juppe, a close ally of Mr Chirac, was convicted over the alleged scam in 2004, earning a one-year ban from politics

Meanwhile Mr Chirac continues to claim presidential immunity in the so-called Clearstream affair, which occurred while he was still in office.

Investigators are probing allegations that Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr Chirac's successor, was the victim of a smear campaign in 2004 aimed at derailing his bid for the presidency. Dominique de Villepin, Mr Chirac's last prime minister, was placed under official investigation in July and has implicated his former boss.

Mr Chirac also faces an investigation into a Japanese back account allegedly opened in his name in the early 1990s with as much as £30 million in it - money that investigators think could be linked to French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

Lavish dining

5,000 vintage bottles of wine bought by Chirac while he was Mayor of Paris, using taxpayers’ money

£400 daily grocery bill for Chirac and his wife during his mayoral term

Source: Times archive

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