If Jacques Chirac ends up in court, the charges against him will represent only a fraction of the often lurid allegations that emerged from his 18-year reign as the first Mayor of Paris since the 19th century.

In his heyday, when Mr Chirac used the baronial city hall as the power base for his Gaullist party, the mayoral machine was celebrated for what might be kindly called its largesse. Mr Chirac was accused of commanding a grace and favour system that benefited friends, supporters and their associates. If you had the connections, it was alleged, one of the Mayor’s private offices could help your children with jobs or fix you up with a handsome Paris apartment at council-house prices.

Money was no object for the Chirac family, according to accounts from former insiders and judicial investigators. When Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, followed Jean Tiberi, Mr Chirac’s successor, as Mayor in 2001, his inspectors reportedly found that taxpayers had been funding £500 a day in food and drink for Jacques, Bernadette and Claude, their daughter, who lived with them in the sprawling apartments in the baronial Hôtel de Ville. The funds did not even cover entertainment expenses.

No legal action was taken against the then president who has, until now, escaped the legal fallout from a period when city hall was raking in millions a year in kickbacks from building contractors and other businesses.

The cloud of sleaze dogged Mr Chirac for much of his presidency. He skirted disaster in 2000 after the publication of a posthumous videotape made by Jean-Claude Mery, one of the clandestine financiers of the Mayor’s party, Rassemblement pour la Republique. Mery claimed to have regularly collected suitcases of cash from donors and deposited them with the Mayor. At the same time, investigators said that Mr Chirac, his family and friends, including a journalist, had made expensive trips to Indian Ocean resorts and the US, with expenses paid in cash.

Mr Chirac shook off the scandal in a celebrated television appearance in September 2001. Nevertheless, the Government of the time put an end to the bundles of cash that were distributed to Cabinet ministers once a month for use at their discretion.

Mr Chirac, who enjoys his country’s affection as its genial elder statesman, has always succeeded in “passing between the raindrops”, as the French expression puts it. Few Paris insiders expect yesterday’s corruption charges to go far.

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