Former French president Jacques Chirac will stand trial on charges of misusing public funds during his time as mayor of Paris, a French judge ordered today.
Mr Chirac was charged with using government money to pay members of his party with no-show job contracts at City Hall while he was mayor, according to the trial order issued by Xaviere Simeoni, the judge leading the criminal probe.
The employees "should have been at the service of Paris City Hall, while in reality, they worked for the mayor of Paris's political party," said Laurent Dubois, a professor at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris. France passed campaign finance laws in 1995, after Mr Chirac's tenure as mayor.
"So it's not so much Mr Chirac who is at issue, it's the political system," Mr Dubois said, noting an April poll that named Mr Chirac as France's most popular political figure.
Mr Chirac (76), is the first former French president to be put on trial. He served as mayor from 1977 to 1995 before being elected president. He has since formed the Fondation Chirac, a Paris-based group dedicated to fighting poverty and environmental degradation, and advocating cultural diversity, according to the organisation's website.
Judge Simeoni found 21 of 481 city hall employment contracts she studied to have been covers for work done for Mr Chirac's Rally for the Republic, or RPR, party. Mr Chirac was cleared on the charge of falsifying public documents, according to a statement today from the former president's office.
Mr Chirac's lawyer Jean Veil, declined to comment on the accusation, saying he needed to study the report.
A spokesman for the Paris prosecutors was not immediately available to comment on the decision. The courts will set a trial date later.
The investigation was stalled by French rules which state that a sitting president can only be tried for high treason.
Bloomberg