Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin has been acquitted by an appeals court of trying to discredit president Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-up to the 2007 presidential election.
The dropping of charges in what is known as the Clearstream affair, for its links to the Luxembourg-based securities clearing house, leaves Mr de Villepin free to run in the 2012 election, when Mr Sarkozy is expected to seek a second term.
"I've come out of this test even stronger than before, and even more determined to serve my fellow Frenchmen," Mr de Villepin told reporters outside the court following the verdict.
Mr de Villepin, who has quit Mr Sarkozy's conservative UMP party and published his own centre-right political manifesto, was acquitted last year in the first round of the Clearstream trial but prosecutors appealed the verdict.
The case centred on a forged list of names which linked Mr Sarkozy to a corruption probe relating to secret Luxembourg bank accounts.
Mr de Villepin, prime minister from 2005 to 2007 under president Jacques Chirac, was accused of doing nothing to stop the rumour mill even though he knew the list was fake.
Prosecutors said he was an "accomplice by abstention" in the scam, which tried to falsely accuse Mr Sarkozy and others of stashing covert kickbacks in accounts with Clearstream.
Never elected to public office, Mr de Villepin was chief-of-staff in the mid-1990s to Mr Chirac, who named him prime minister in 2005 after stints as foreign and interior minister.
Reuters