French prosecutors will appeal a court decision to acquit former prime minister Dominique de Villepin of plotting to smear French President Nicolas Sarkozy to torpedo his presidential bid, state prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said yesterday.
“All has not emerged in this case. There is still scope for a part of the truth to emerge ... I have decided to lodge an appeal,” Marin told Europe 1 radio, the day after Villepin was cleared.
Marin said the court’s decision was “surprising.”
Villepin told France 2 television late on Thursday that he could “not for a moment” imagine an appeal, as the court had left “no doubt” of his innocence.
In an early reaction yesterday, he said that Sarkozy “is continuing his vendetta.”
The acquittal was a triumph for Villepin in the five-year legal saga and was seen as bolstering his chances of a political comeback as he sets his sights on the 2012 presidential vote.
It was a slap in the face for Sarkozy who had reportedly vowed to hang those responsible for the scandal by a “butcher’s hook.”
Villepin immediately vowed to return to the political fray, criticizing Sarkozy’s policies for “not giving results” and saying he would challenge the president from within the UMP party that both men belong to.
The complex case centers on a list — later proved to have been fabricated — of account holders at the Clearstream financial clearing house who allegedly took bribes from the sale of French warships to Taiwan.
Sarkozy’s name was on the list and the French leader alleges the scandal was fabricated in 2004 — when he and Villepin were angling to succeed president Jacques Chirac — to tarnish him ahead of his party’s nomination for the 2007 presidential vote.
Villepin was cleared on all four counts in the case dubbed France’s trial of the decade: complicity to slander, to use forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust.
Three other defendants were convicted: former-aerospace executive Jean-Louis Gergorin who admitted to leaking the fake list to investigators, Imad Lahoud who confessed to adding Sarkozy’s name to the list and accountant Florian Bourges, who obtained data on account holders that were later falsified.
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