De Villepin to Stand Trial Over Alleged Plot to Smear Sarkozy

The former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin has been ordered to stand trial for his role in an alleged plot to smear Nicolas Sarkozy.

The scandal, known as the "Clearsteam affair", and described as a French Watergate, is a tangled web of alleged spying and political manoeuvres at the heart of the French government. It dates back to 2004, when de Villepin and Sarkozy were both ministers under Jacques Chirac and vying to succeed him as president.

In summer 2004 an anonymous source wrote to a judge accusing a string of politicians and businessmen of holding secret bank accounts for laundering bribes at the Luxembourg bank Clearstream. Among the list was the then finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy. But the accusations were false and the accounts did not exist.

Sarkozy complained that the affair was used to discredit him in the run-up to the presidential race. A judicial inquiry has since examined whether senior members of the government prolonged the bogus corruption scandal, using intelligence officials in a deliberate plot to smear Sarkozy's name.

De Villepin has consistently denied all wrongdoing. But a source close to the case said he has been charged with "complicity in libel" . His trial, along with four other key figures, is expected to take place next year and promises to lay bare the poisonous atmosphere and rivalries of the final years of the Chirac era.

Sarkozy became a plaintiff in the Clearstream case in 2006, asking magistrates to find those behind the scandal.

But after news broke that he faced trial, de Villepin issued a statement complaining he was a victim of legal bias. "Nothing justifies this decision to go to trial," he said. He added that, throughout the investigation "the reality of the facts and of the law has been twisted in favor of a single plaintiff", who happened to be the French president.

Jean-Pierre Grand, an MP close to de Villepin, told AFP news agency that the former prime minister was being treated like a "Soviet dissident".

The Elysee declined to comment.