Former French premier testifies in slander trial pitting him against French president

Former French premier testifies in smear trial

PARIS — Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin denied orchestrating a plot to discredit President Nicolas Sarkozy, in testimony Wednesday that is central to a high-profile slander trial pitting the two political rivals against each other.

Calmly and methodically, Villepin — famed for a 2003 speech at the United Nations arguing against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq — laid out his defense in what the French have dubbed the Clearstream trial.

Villepin, accused of complicity in slander and forgery, is its star defendant. The star plaintiff is Sarkozy.

The trial centers on mysterious lists circulating in 2004 that claimed to show clients with secret accounts at the Luxembourg clearing house Clearstream, including Sarkozy and other leading political and business figures. The accounts purportedly had been created to store kickbacks from the sale of warships to Taiwan, among other shady income.

The lists made the rounds in judicial and political circles and were leaked to the media. Then, investigators determined they had been faked.

Sarkozy says it was all a smear campaign to thwart his bid to be elected president in 2007 — and filed suit saying he believed Villepin was “the primary instigator” behind it. At the time, both men were leading conservative contenders to succeed then-President Jacques Chirac.

The presiding judge asked Villepin on Wednesday if he was the one who sent the lists to judges to investigate them, a key question in the trial.

“No,” Villepin replied. He has said he never saw the lists himself.

Villepin said he was not behind any plot targeting Sarkozy and denied that his mentor and ally Chirac was involved, testifying that he “never had any presidential instructions from Jacques Chirac in this case.”

Before entering the courtroom, Villepin said taking the stand “will allow me to provide my contribution to the emergence of the truth in an affair in which lies and manipulation have obscured this truth.”

Two leading defendants have already testified. Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former vice president at Airbus parent company EADS, sent the lists to the investigating judge. He told the court he was duped by a well-connected computer expert, Imad Lahoud, alleged to be the one who falsified the lists.

Gergorin told the court he remains “convinced of the total good faith of Mr. de Villepin.”

About 20 witnesses are expected to testify in the trial, which began Sept. 21 and runs through Oct. 21.