Two a penny

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AFP – French prosecutors said Tuesday they have called for judges to drop corruption charges against former president Jacques Chirac, who is accused of misusing city funds when he was Paris mayor.

A French judge wrapped up a probe in April into allegations that municipal funds were used to give fake ghost jobs to members of Chirac’s RPR party while he was mayor of the capital from 1977 to 1995, officials said.

The now 77-year-old Chirac was charged in November 2007 in the case along with five former city hall chiefs of staff and a dozen other people, becoming the first former French president to be put under judicial investigation.

Judge Xaviere Simeoni now has until the end of October to decide whether to send the case to trial.

But the Paris prosecutor’s office said Tuesday it has called for the case to be thrown out, arguing there was insufficient evidence of misuse of funds after 1992, and that the statute of limitations had expired for prior events.

Chirac stood down as mayor of Paris in 1995 when he became president. . He lost his presidential immunity from prosecution after President Nicolas Sarkozy’s election in May 2007.

corruption – France – Jacques Chirac
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Former aides to Chirac have defended him against allegations that he presided over a system of illegal money-raising for his party, the Rally for the Republic (RPR)

.Swimmer Ian Thorpe has dropped a defamation case against a French newspaper that claimed he was a drug cheat.
Thorpe was suing the daily sports paper L’Equipe, its publisher, and journalist Damien Ressiot over an article published in March 2007.
The paper claimed Thorpe gave a urine sample in May 2006 which showed abnormal levels of testosterone and a luteinising hormone.
The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority and world swimming body FINA later found there was no evidence to support claims Thorpe had used performance enhancing drugs. .
– ABC/AAP

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AFP – French Prime Minister Francois Fillon confirmed in an interview to be published on Sunday that Pierre Gadonneix will be replaced as chairman of energy giant EDF, but he did not name his successor.

We have deemed it necessary to renew the company’s management, though I must pay homage to Pierre Gadonneix, who accompanied EDF’s smooth and successful transformation, Fillon told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

French financial daily Les Echos has reported that Veolia Environment president Henri Proglio will take over as EDF chairman.

We have defined the ideal profile and the choice would not be a political one, he said.

The French state owns 85 percent of EDF, which operates France’s 58 nuclear reactors, the world’s biggest network of atomic power plants.

Proglio, 60, is backed by the French presidency to replace Gadonneix, who has been EDF chief since 2004, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the situation.

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France ministry of foreign affairs stated Wednesday that it will not accept that the situation regarding Clotilde Reiss, a young French researcher who was arrested in Tehran amid a crackdown on streets protests following the disputed June 12 presidential poll, is analogous to that of Iranians detained in France for whom Tehran has demanded amnesty.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to appear on French television to give his reactions to demands made by his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that some form of prisoner exchange be discussed.

According to several sources, the Iranian detainees in question could include Ali Vakili Rad, sentenced in 1991 for the assassination of former Iranian PM Chapour Bakhtiar, and Majid Kakavand, arrested on the behest of the US, because he bought suspicious materials over the Internet &ndash and for whom the US has requested extradition. .

Asked about Iran request, foreign ministry deputy spokesperson Christine Fages said, You cannot compare Clothilde Reiss&rsquo situation with those to whom you are referring.

Clotilde Reiss trial – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – Nicolas Sarkozy

.The Renault team has been given a two-year suspended ban from the Formula One world championship after admitting to race-fixing.
The French car manufacturer, appearing before an FIA World Motor Sport Council hearing in Paris, had said it would not contest accusations the team ordered Brazilian Nelson Piquet to crash his car into a wall at last year’s Singapore Grand Prix so that Spanish team-mate Fernando Alonso might win.
The suspended ban will last until the end of the 2011 season.
“The ING Renault F1 team admitted that the team had conspired with its driver Nelson Piquet Jr to cause a deliberate crash at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, in breach of the International Sporting Code and F1 Sporting Regulations’” the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) said overnight.
“Renault F1′s breaches not only compromised the integrity of the sport but also endangered the lives of spectators, officials, other competitors and Nelson Piquet Jr himself.
“The World Motor Sport Council considers Renault F1′s breach relating to the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to be of unparalleled severity,” the statement added. .”
Former team boss Flavio Briatore was also banned from any further involvement in Formula One, including driver management.
“Mr Alonso was not in any way involved in Renault F1′s breach of the regulations,” the FIA said.
Double world champion Fernando Alonso was exonerated of any involvement at the hearing.
FIA president Max Mosley told reporters after the hearing that the team would remain in Formula One, but Renault F1 chairman Bernard Rey did not comment. Piquet Jr had been granted immunity by the FIA before the hearing.
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AFP – An Algerian jailed for life for links to a wave of bomb attacks on the Paris metro that killed eight people in 1995 appeared in a French court on Wednesday to appeal his conviction.

Rachid Ramda, sporting a trim beard and leaning on crutches for a sprained ankle, replied in Arabic when asked to confirm his identity at the hearing attended by families of people who died in the bombings.

He is fighting a 2007 ruling that concluded he acted for the militant Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in funding three attacks on metro stations in which 200 people were also injured. The others, on the Musee d’Orsay and Maison-Blanche metro stations, left dozens injured.

The most spectacular attack was on the Saint-Michel station in the heart of the capital that left eight people dead and 150 injured.

He’s a manipulator and we could well have done without a second trial that is going to plunge us all back into this drama, she said.

If he had something to say he would have said it in the first trial, Mireille Glorion, whose 24-year-old daughter Sandrine died in the Saint-Michel attack, said before the hearing began.

Ramda was extradited from Britain in December 2005 after a 10-year legal battle.

Ramda, who will turn 40 on September 29, denies any connection with the bombings, for which two other men — Boualem Bensaid and Ait Ali Belkacem — are serving life sentences. He had already been sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison by a separate French court on other charges related to the bombings.

In the latest appeal trial, his defence lawyers are expected to again argue that Algerian secret services manipulated events and set French investigators on false trails for domestic political reasons.

He was convicted in 2007 of channelling funds from London to the two perpetrators of the bomb plot, based on evidence that included a bank payment slip bearing his fingerprints.

Ramda’s lawyers have also said they will ask for testimony from Jean-Louis Debre, who was France’s defence minister at the time of the metro bombings. .

Investigators believe that in the early 1990s Ramda was a leading GIA operative in Europe, in regular touch with the group’s leader in Algeria Jamel Zeitouni who wished to punish France for its support of the Algiers government.

Investigators believe that in the early 1990s Ramda was a leading GIA operative in Europe, in regular touch with the group’s leader in Algeria Jamel Zeitouni who wished to punish France for its support of the Algiers government.

His supporters argued against his extradition to France on the grounds that he might be unlawfully sent back to Algeria to face the death penalty, which the French authorities denied.

He fled to Britain where he was kept under surveillance and was arrested in November 1995, but he evaded extradition for many years through a series of legal appeals.

His appeal trial is expected to last a month.

The delays were a source of friction between Britain and France, which accused the government in London of taking a soft line on Islamist terrorism.

France – justice – Paris

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AFP- The French government said Monday it will award residency permits to foreign entrepreneurs and investors to reward them for creating jobs and investing in the country.

Under the terms of a decree to be published Tuesday, anyone who creates or saves 50 jobs, or pledges to invest at least 10 million euros (15 million dollars) in the country, will be entitled to a 10-year resident’s permit.

The measure would apply to individual investors or shareholders with a 30-percent or higher stake in a business found to have made an exceptional economic contribution, said a statement from the immigration ministry.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has tightened French immigration laws since his election in 2007, setting quotas for the deportation of undocumented migrants and favouring skilled foreigners seen as benefiting the economy.

Around 1,000 people are expected eventually to benefit from the scheme, with an initial 200 resident cards to be handed out in 2010.

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REUTERS – A new French law means the Church of Scientology cannot be dissolved in France even if it is convicted of fraud, it has emerged during a trial of the organisation.

A prosecutor has recommended that a Paris court dissolve the church French branch, which has been charged with fraud after complaints by former members who say they gave huge sums to the church for spiritual classes and purification packs.

Whatever the ruling, under a legislative reform passed just before the start of the trial in May, it is no longer possible to punish a fraudulent organisation with dissolution.

The Church of Scientology French arm denies fraud. Georges Fenech, head of the unit, demanded on Monday that the legal power to dissolve an organisation be reinstated.

The legal snag was discovered by the Inter-ministerial Unit to Monitor and Fight Cults.

Prosecutors&rsquo unions and a lawyer representing alleged victims of the Church of Scientology, Olivier Morice, called for an inquiry into the legal change and an explanation from the Justice Ministry.

Faced with organisations of a sectarian nature, which present a real danger to public order and public health, the law must always have such a measure at its disposal, he said in a statement. .

Even if the law is changed again, it cannot be applied retroactively to the Scientology trial, which was held in May and June, with the ruling expected in late October.

The church said in a statement on Monday its prosecution was scandalous and had already seriously harmed the organisation.

He said he believed a ban was better than dissolution, since it meant an organisation could not continue its activities under a different name.

The trial, which began on May 25, centres on complaints made in the late 1990s.

Registered as a religion in the United States, with celebrity members such as actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, Scientology enjoys no such legal protection in France.

Prosecutor Maud Coujard urged the court to return a guilty verdict, dissolve the organisation in France and fine it 4 million euros ($5. Scientology French headquarters, a bookshop and six leading French Scientology members are in the dock.

Scientology lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve, has called the prosecutor recommendation a death sentence for the organisation in France.8 million).

France – legislation – Scientology

.French first division club Bayonne has pulled out of talks with dumped Wallabies winger Lote Tuqiri as a result of his “latest financial demands”.
“Following the latest financial demands of Lote Tuqiri, Bayonne have decided to bring talks with the Australian player to an end,” the Top 14 club said in a statement.
The 67-Test veteran winger came to France at the end of August to discuss a possible contract with Bayonne and also the Paris-based Stade Francais.
The 29-year-old Tuqiri was the previous month cut by the Australian Rugby Union halfway through a five-year contract for undisclosed reasons.

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AFP – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s stated plans to award a multi-billion-dollar fighter jet contract to France ran into turbulence on Wednesday amid pressure from rival bidders and Brazil’s air force.

The selection process has not yet finished, Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said in a statement late Tuesday.

That position ran counter to official statements by Lula and his government on Monday — during Brazil’s Independence Day attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy — to the effect that the deal had all but sealed in favor of France’s Rafale jets made by Dassault.

Brazil will continue with negotiations with the three participants they will be followed up and the proposals potentially reshaped, he said.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim specified that the decision to extend the talks with Dassault was not adopted in relation to the other two bidders, Boeing of the United States and Saab of Sweden.

President Lula has announced the decision by the Brazilian side to begin negotiations with the GIE Rafale to acquire 36 Rafale combat aircraft, Lula and Sarkozy said in a joint statement on that day.

But Brazil’s air force, which had not yet submitted its painstakingly detailed analysis of all three contenders to Lula, objected to being sidelined, analysts said.

A Rafale spokesperson at the time told that President Lula’s declaration clearly means that the Rafale has won the competition.

The problem is that the final report (by the air force) was to be submitted at the end of October, he said.

I think our president got a bit ahead of himself, said one Brazilian military analyst, Alvaro Pinheiro.

The military is complaining that this leaves it little room to negotiate the two contracts: the aviation system (the jets) and the weapons systems (missiles and bombs), he said.

Nelson During, a respected Brazilian military expert, agreed.

By plumping for the Rafale jets before the tender procedure was complete, Lula was short-circuiting the Brazilian congress’s defense committee, to the fury of party leaders, he explained.

The two president have created some confusion and now we’re going to see what the military wanted to avoid at all cost: a debate in the media between lobbies and interest groups.

Nevertheless, he said, because it appeared that a political deal had been struck directly between Lula and Sarkozy, it is very difficult to reverse this. Jobim’s backtracking was to placate them.

The US government, which authorized the export sale of the F/A-18, said in a statement through its embassy in Brazil: We understand that a final decision has not yet been made regarding the winner of the contract. .

It also objected to Lula’s explanation that he preferred the Rafale as a result of France’s offer to share all the technology that goes into the jet so Brazil could one day build its own fighters.

The F/A-18, in its opinion, is the best in comparison to its competitors, it said.

The United States welcomes the opportunity to enter into open negotiations, the statement said.

Approval by the US Congress means that (the) US government approval of the transfer to Brazil of the advanced technologies associated with the US government offer of the F/A-18 Super Hornet is final, it said.

Asked whether there was confusion in the Swedish company over the different messages from Brazil’s government, she replied yes.

Saab’s team in Brazil was still digesting the developments and would issue a media statement later, a spokeswoman, Bruna Dias, told AFP.

The contract to supply Brazil’s air force with fighters it will use for the next three decades is worth an estimated four billion to seven billion dollars, making it one of the biggest defense tenders in the world.

The contract to supply Brazil’s air force with fighters it will use for the next three decades is worth an estimated four billion to seven billion dollars, making it one of the biggest defense tenders in the world.

Brazil already has close military ties with France, having bought a second-hand aircraft carrier from it in 2000 and last December striking a 10-billion-dollar deal to buy five submarines and 50 helicopters.

Lula’s government has emphasized since the fighter jet tender was launched early 2008 that the priority was technology transfer, so Brazil could become a sophisticated industrial power in its own right and have the means to protect its vast natural resources.

Brazil – contracts – France – military