Spooks, bribes and frigates: France's gripping Clearstream trial ends

[clear eye]

Source: The Guardian World News

Complex hearing involved Nicolas Sarkozy, an ex-prime minister, spies, a Luxembourg bank and a ship deal with Taiwan

...For over a month, the "Clearstream" trial, the culmination of an extraordinarily complex series of political, financial and legal investigations and manoeuvres, has gripped France.

Today, the crowded hearings in the high court's Prémière Salle ended. But the Clearstream affair was never going to end in an ordinary trial.

In the dock, with four others, was Dominique de Villepin, the urbane, aristocratic former prime minister and foreign minister, best known outside France for his powerful oratory during debates at the United Nations in New York in the run up to the 2003 Iraq War.

De Villepin was accused of trying to cause catastrophic political damage to the career of Nicolas Sarkozy, the current president, by arranging for (or at the very least allowing) a forged list of account holders to reach investigating judges. The accounts were supposed to hold ill-gotten gains from kickbacks or the proceeds of organised crime, and the list included the name of De Villepin's arch-rival, as well as those of scores of other top political and business establishment figures.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/23/france-clearstream-sarkozy-de-villepin

[JDPriestly]

1. The French are masters of intrigue second to none.

But then, we still don't know the provenance of the forgeries of the Iraq/Niger memos on sails of yellow-cake.

[Stumbler]

2. And we won't know until the players of that act are dead and gone, i'd say in 30 to 50 years or so.

Btw, it's 'sales,' not 'sails.'

[xchrom]

3. it's one of the reasons why i love them. nt