It has taken 25 years for ex-prime minister Edouard Balladur to stand trial over the 'Karachi affair'
Credit: YOAN VALAT/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/Shutterstock
Former French prime minister Edouard Balladur stood trial on Tuesday on charges that he used kickbacks from arms deals in the 1990s to fund a presidential bid.
Also in the dock at the Court of Justice of the Republic in Paris — dedicated to trying ex-ministers charged with misconduct while in office — was his former defence minister Francois Leotard, 78.
The two men were charged in 2017 with "complicity in the misuse of corporate assets" over the sale of submarines to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia between 1993 and 1995, when Mr Balladur was prime minister towards the end of Francois Mitterrand’s seven-year presidency.
The allegations first surfaced during an investigation into a 2002 bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, which targeted a bus transporting French engineers.
Fifteen people were killed, including 11 engineers working on the submarine contract.
It was initially blamed on al-Qaeda terrorists, but investigating judges also looked into whether the blast was to punish France for allegedly failing to pay part of €80 million (£71m) in sweeteners to senior Pakistani officials.
When Jacques Chirac beat Mr Balladur to become French president in 1995, it is alleged that he punished his one-time ally for running against him by halting the remaining payments to Pakistani middlemen.
However, investigators in 2019 reportedly once again suspected the blast may have been the work of extremists after all.
Mr Leotard is accused of having created an "opaque network" of middle-men for the contracts signed with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
French ex-prime minister Edouard Balladur (R) adn his ex defence minister François Leotard (L) deny wrongdoing
Credit: PATRICK KOVARIK/ AFP
Mr Balladur also stands charged with instructing the budget ministry — at the time led by Nicolas Sarkozy who was also his presidential campaign spokesman — to approve state guarantees for "deficient or underfunded" contracts, because of the alleged kickbacks.
Cash deposits in Mr Balladur’s campaign fund coincided with trips to Switzerland by Ziad Takieddine, a Lebanese-French intermediary who has long been active in French rightwing circles.
Takieddine fled to Lebanon last June after a Paris court sentenced him and another middleman, Abdul Rahman El-Assir, to five years in prison over their role in the "Karachi" kickbacks.
Mr Balladur’s former campaign manager Nicolas Bazire was handed a three-year sentence by the same court, as did Leotard’s adviser Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres.
Thierry Gaubert, an adviser to Mr Sarkozy at the finance ministry, and a former executive at state-owned naval contractor DCN (since renamed Naval Group) got two-year sentences. All have appealed the rulings.
Mr Sarkozy has previously angrily rejected media speculation that he might have known of the payments as “grotesque".
Takieddine told judges in 2013 that he participated in the secret financing of Mr Balladur’s campaign after being asked by Bazire and Gaubert, though he retracted the claim six years later.
In November, Takieddine also took back his claim that he delivered suitcases stuffed with €5m in cash from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to Mr Sarkozy’s chief of staff in 2006 and 2007, to help his successful presidential campaign.
Mr Sarkozy has denied the allegations, and investigations into the case are continuing, but no proceedings have been taken against Sarkozy. His chief of staff denies any involvement.
In a separate case, the Right-wing ex-president is awaiting the verdict on March 1 of his landmark corruption trial in which prosecutors have called for a sentence of four years for trying to bribe a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.
He has also been embroiled in investigations into campaign overspending.
He denies all the allegations.
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