Nicholas Sarkozy and former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villipin may belong to the same political party, the UDF, but that is where the similarity ends.
This week, the “L’Affaire Clearstream” will go to trial in France. For those not familiar with the scandal, here is the story. The Clearstream Affair is named for a financial clearinghouse involved in the sale of French warships to the island country of Taiwan during the 1990’s. From the beginning the $2.9 billion sale of the warships to Taiwan was fraught with controversy and shortly after the sale, rumors began that a computer disc existed, a disc which listed the names of forty French politicians and government officials who received kick-backs from the sale of the warships.
The list proved to be a forgery. It was prepared by a Lebanese financier and turned over anonymously to the French Ministry of Justice. One name on that list was Nicholas Sarkozy. In September 2004, a defamation inquiry was launched by another name on the fake list, Airbus executive Phillippe Delmas. That inquiry is now a criminal suit, with forty plaintiffs and Dominique de Villipin accused of conspiracy to commit slander.
More so than in the US, slander is a very serious charge in Europe and if found guilty, de Villipin could serve five years in prison and be fined $66,000. But is de Villipin guilty? Many insiders think that the real culprit is former French President Jacques Chirac, who wanted to ensure that de Villipin rather than Sarkozy was his heir apparent.
Sarkozy and Chirac have a long, complicated and often acrimonious relationship, some believe stemming from the fact that Sarkozy is not ethnically French. Many were stunned in 2005, when Chirac asked Sarkozy to become a part of his government. Sarkozy had been a protégé of Chirac and the two had a relatively close relationship until Sarkozy broke with his mentor and endorsed Édouard Balladur in the 2002 French presidential race. Sarkozy’s abandonment of Chirac nearly cost his center-right party the race against the ultranationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen.
While Sarkozy is not expected to testify, and as president he is not required to do so, he will certainly be following its progress closely. In 2006, Sarkozy was quoted that I will "find the rat behind the affair and hang him up on a meat hook." We’ll see if he gets his wish. De Villipin’s attorney’s have argued that Sarkozy’s position as president endangers de Villipin’s ability to secure a fair trial and one of the judges’ first orders of business will be to rule of de Villipin’s request that Sarkozy’s name be stripped from the list of plaintiffs.
Of course, political dirty tricks are not limited to the UDF party. In Sarkozy’s run as president, his socialist counterpart Ségolène Royal accused her former common-law husband and leader of the French Socialist Party, François Hollande, with subterfuge in her narrow loss to Sarkozy. Royal contends that Hollande, who left Royal and their four children for a mistress Valerie Trierweiler, discouraged get out the vote efforts on Election Day. It was a break-up of not only their personal relationship, but their political relationship as well. Hollande had served as party chairman for more than a decade, and following her loss Royal challenged Hollande for leadership of the party. She came close, winning a plurality of the vote, but losing narrowly to a compromise candidate in the run-off.
By Royal’s problème domestique pales in comparison to Clearstream, dubbed the trial of the decade.
Link to English language coverage of L'Affair Clearstream from France24.
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travelwoman
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Sep 21 @ 11:50AM
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Corruption and kick-backs have always been a great part of France's political players. One may remember Chirac's and Giscard's problems in that regard.
Now what is really interesting (as per your blog.... haven't had time to read through the link...) is that France sells warships to Taiwan, and a LEBANESE has put together a list of names of people who received kick-backs. 
Since a long time, Lebanese merchants have been collaborating with legal and illegal weapon and war material sales originating from France.
And the money generally ran through Switzerland, with the help of Swedish brokers...  
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iglooo101
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Sep 21 @ 12:07PM
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Nicolas Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa
**Family background**
Nicolas Sarkozy is a French man of mixed national and ethnic ancestry. He is the son of Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa, (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál; some sources spell it Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál; Hungarian pronunciation (help·info) n????bo?t???i ?a?rkøzi pa?l)[6] a Hungarian aristocrat,[7] and Andrée Mallah, who is of French Catholic and Greek-Sephardic Jewish descent. [8]
Clearstream, shows that HOW THE HUNTER BECAME THE PREY
Chirac is a politician and because he is a politician he never left behind his fingerprints. Chirac used the government's normal channels in the Clearstream enquiry.
BUT, the main focus of the Clearstream enquiry was Sarkozy. Chirac wanted to collect dirt ANY DIRT about Sarkozy to hurt his chances to become a president.
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CPUfan
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Sep 21 @ 3:41PM
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Yes this is quite a beautiful story, East. De Villepin was hoping to score some cheap political victories through slander, defamation and falsehoods. 
Heh this is something that many other political systems should consider as such methods are quite likely to have disastrous results....
It reminds me very much of the Lee Atwater method of attempting to elect a leader. That strategy actually succeeded, but the story turned out in a very surprising way and the truth about it was a damning legacy for late 80s politicians.
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