CHIRAC - Scandal hits over 'lost' cash for ransom

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Current News - Homefront Preparations : One Thread

Telegraph

Scandal hits Chirac over 'lost' cash for ransom By Harry de Quetteville in Paris (Filed: 08/01/2002)

PRESIDENT CHIRAC was embroiled in new scandal last night after documents were printed allegedly showing that close aides received kickbacks from a ransom paid to release French hostages held in the Middle East.

M Chirac was prime minister in 1988 when five French hostages held by Islamic Jihad in Lebanon were released. At the time he was standing as president against the Socialist François Mitterrand - a campaign which he lost.

M Chirac and his then interior minister, Charles Pasqua, always insisted that no ransom was paid to free the hostages. But last month the affair was revived after an anonymous memo from the French intelligence service, DST, was sent to an investigating magistrate.

The note was published for the first time yesterday by the newspaper Le Monde. It not only suggests that the interior ministry ordered the ransom to be paid, but alleges that officials kept a substantial slice of it for themselves.

The ransom deal - thought to be almost £2 million - was allegedly brokered between a Lebanese businessman and an aide to M Pasqua at the French interior ministry.

The DST memo handed to the French judge leading the investigation, Isabelle Prevost-Desprez, alleges that once the businessman had been given the ransom money by the interior ministry, he set up a Swiss bank account to transfer some of it back to banks in Paris.

It then describes in detail twice-weekly cash deliveries made from the banks to the interior ministry aide. There is no suggestion that M Pasqua knew of the alleged payments.

The memo reads: "Over a long period there were one or two deliveries a week each of Ff200,000 to Ff300,000 (about £20-30,000). "In October 2000 alone the known cash transfers amounted to Ff850,000."

The DST note continued: "The money from the Swiss account is part of the ransom paid by the French state for the hostages in Lebanon kept back by the negotiators."

M Pasqua has said the leak of an intelligence memo so long after the release of the hostages was evidence of a Socialist plot to undermine the political Right before presidential and legislative elections this spring.

He described the affair as "political manipulation in all its splendour". But nevertheless the scandal may force M Chirac, who has repeatedly denied any ransom payment, into an uncomfortable corner.

"Obviously there was a ransom," said former aide to the late President Mitterrand, Michel Cantal-Dupart, in an interview at the weekend.

"That is always the procedure with hostage situations."

-- Anonymous, January 07, 2002


Moderation questions? read the FAQ