Pave: Ex-Jack, The Adventure Continues VII

Le jour 190 de Sarko

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CHIRAC NAMED AS SUSPECT IN PARIS EMBEZZLEMENT PROBE

November 21, 2007 (Bloomberg) - Jacques Chirac, former president of France, was named a formal suspect in a probe linked to the embezzlement of public funds while he was mayor of Paris.

Investigating judge Xaviere Simeoni placed Chirac under investigation following questioning this morning, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor's office who declined to be identified said. Chirac is the first former French president to be placed under criminal investigation.

... The judge is investigating claims that during Chirac's tenure as mayor of Paris from 1977 and 1995, people were paid as City employees while doing work for Chirac's Rally for the Republic political party.

... Chirac said he did nothing improper during his term as mayor* in a column today in Le Monde. Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack:

The means of the City of Paris were never put to the service of anything other than Parisians. There was never any personal enrichment.

Then Jack, Now Ex-Jack finds this extra-legal theory -- that without personal enrichment there is no crime -- both exculpatory and morally sufficient. [Pause.] Too bad that's not good enough for the courts, which bother themselves over points of law.

Even granting Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack's dubious claim, of course he was personally enriched. Everyone, including Ex-Jack, admits that money was extorted to fund political parties. The Parisians to whom these funds were "put to service" were the party bosses and candidates and minions. To pretend that a candidate elected with funds extorted for his campaign or a party functionary rewarded with a no-show job, to pretend these are not instances of personal enrichment radically reinvents the concept of personal enrichment. Who if not persons were the beneficiaries of the vast sums of defalcated monies? Certainly the benefits to the party directly translated into benefits to persons of the party. And the biggest translation was to Then-Jack, where all distributed benefits contributed one way or the other to his successful presidential bid.

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* Of course the courts have found plenty of chiraquiens who did plenty improperly (and here and here) during Then-Jack's mayoralty.

PFFT (What is this?): Only virtuous extortions 0 | Rayonnement français 3 (Indictment) / 0 (Then-Jack, Now Ex-Jack's exculpation, there is no lower rating)