A French Affair

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, President Jacques Chirac's protege, weakened by his embarassing capitulation to students protesting in the streets, is in BIG TROUBLE. The Telegraph:

Mr de Villepin is under pressure over the so-called Clearstream affair, dubbed the "French Watergate", in which an anonymous whistle-blower alleged without foundation that senior political and business figures took kickbacks from the sale of French frigates to Taiwan in 1991.

The money was allegedly laundered through secret accounts with Clearstream, a Luxembourg-based bank. Individuals were named in anonymous letters and a CD-rom sent two years ago to an investigating judge, who established that they were bogus.

Mr de Villepin's future may depend on the truth of what happened at a meeting in January 2004, when he was foreign secretary, with the intelligence official Gen Philippe Rondot. Gen Rondot reportedly told judges hunting the author of the false allegations that Mr de Villepin ordered him, on the authority of President Jacques Chirac, to investigate Mr Sarkozy.

Mr. Sarkozy is his rival within the center-right party in France. (This is a bit confusing, though, as France really has nothing analogous to a party espousing a free-market, conservative philosophy. It seems as though they are all socialists or nuts on either fringe.) Sarkozy seems to be the most sensible, though.

There is more from Fausta, via No Paseran: (First paragraph emphasis mine---can you believe this?! As if we would care. France has chronic instability, entirely due to its own efforts!)

President Jacques Chirac initially thought this to be an American plot to destabilize France. But Nicolas Sarkozy, current favorite to be Chirac`s replacement as conservative candidate in next year`s presidential election, suspected that it was a plot to disgrace him since his name was prominent on the list of account holders.

Sarkozy, who has filed a civil lawsuit on the matter, also suspects that his arch political rival, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, was playing a murky role. And Sarkozy demanded in a meeting with Villepin and de Florian that his name be publicly cleared.

But the plot thickened as the intelligence services began to hunt 'le corbeau' (the crow), the shadowy person behind the forged CD. Suspicion fell on Prime Minister de Villepin`s close friend, Jean-Louis Gergorin, a top executive at EASDS, which was undergoing its own power struggle that involved the future of Airbus and the French (and wider European) defense industry. Gergorin stoutly denies being 'le corbeau'.

(Le corbeau?) And now the French political elite has been insulted, as well as the Germans, who have obviously been double-crossed:

Since other leading politicians, including the former Socialist Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Khan, are equally infuriated to have found their names on the forged Clearstream list, the whole of France`s political class and its media are currently obsessed with the affair. There is much meat for them to chew over, from the identity of le corbeau to the political implications in this bizarre period of the end of the Chirac regime, and for the effect on European relations of what seems to have been a French plot to dominate the Franco-German EADS group [the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company] and control Europe`s defense industry.

As a totally gratuitous aside, have you ever seen the French movie "The Dinner Game"? I highly recommend it. It is hilarious.

Very mysterious. No image available for the DVD. (I have it on video from some years ago, which is now sold out.) I promise you will not be disappointed, if you know the French at all.