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| Europe |
| Paris judge holds Chiracs to account for £1.4m grocery bill |
| 2003-06-13 |
| So Jacques appears to be just another hack on the public tit? And here we all thought he was some kind of antiwar hero of the oppressed... A Paris investigating magistrate has overruled the recommendation of a senior public prosecutor and set up a formal inquiry into the £1.4m grocery bill claimed by Jacques Chirac and his wife during eight of the 18 years that the president spent as mayor of the French capital. Judge Philippe Courroye said yesterday that the alleged crimes of fraud and misuse of public funds were not subject to a 10-year statute of limitations, as the chief Paris prosecutor, Yves Bot, had argued, because they may have been committed "by a person in a position of public authority". Hey, it appears he's a thief, too. While Mr Chirac cannot be prosecuted (or questioned) as long as he remains in office, the decision could affect his wife, Bernadette, who may have to explain how the couple could consume up to £100 of fruit and veg and £37 of tea and coffee a day, mostly paid for in cash and justified with receipts which, in many cases, appear to have been doctored. Ve likes ze froot, ze tea and ze caffee vairy much. Good luck, Bernadette. I vill vait for you. Ontil then...au revouir. The inquiry follows a complaint filed last year by the current Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, after a damning report by town hall accountants that threw a new light on the Chiracs' spending habits while occupying the mayoral apartments. Because most of the files from the early years of the Chirac tenure were shredded before municipal elections in 2000, the report covers only the years 1987-1995. But the evidence looks strong: during those eight years alone, the Chiracs claimed for, and were reimbursed, £1.45m for their personal food bills. Shredded records? Well, fancy that? Maybe they ate them. Some £950,000 of the bills, which are entirely separate from the mayor's annual £1m entertainment budget, were paid in cash apparently taken from the proceeds of the town hall's staff bar. The money was reimbursed in exchange for receipts that "in many instances give rise to suspicions of substantial fraud", the report says. The town hall's staff bar? How many politicians would be in jail if we had something like that over here? One £1,500 bill for foie gras and truffles had plainly been tampered with. "The initial sum appears to have been £500, with the figure 1 added at a later date," the auditors said. Another bill, for £375 in 1994, was reimbursed "four times that year, and then once the following year, on the basis of carbon copies of different colours and a modified date". Yes, but they were the generic store brand truffles and foie gras. It's so simplisme! The corners of many receipts had been cut off to remove the date, the report adds, while receipts for purchases worth £4,000 from the luxury Paris delicatessen Fauchon "appear purely and simply to be fakes". The president, whose name has been mentioned in half a dozen other scandals ranging from illegal party funding schemes to jobs-for-the-boys scams, has so far declined to comment on the allegations beyond saying that he is confident the police "will do their job properly". If they do, you and the missus'll be sharing a cell. No deliveries from Fauchon in there I'll bet. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #3 Speaking of which, Mike, any word on the status of the Oil-for-Palaces Program fund? Or does one need a Q-clearance for access to that Sacred UN Info? |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-06-13 16:30:48 |
| #2 Subtracting out the internal ag subsidies artificially pumping up the prices of the products, the bill would have been half that. |
| Posted by: ColoradoConservative 2003-06-13 13:37:56 |
| #1 How much do you want to bet he tries to settle the matter by writing a check drawn on the accounts of the UN Oil-For-Food Program? |
| Posted by: Mike 2003-06-13 12:32:35 |