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PARIS - Former President Jacques Chirac was interrogated for four hours yesterday by a judge investigating the alleged embezzlement of public money to fund his political career in the 1980s and 1990s.
The meeting is likely to be the first of many encounters between the former president, 74, and judges investigating alleged illegal fund-raising at the Paris town hall while Chirac was mayor from 1977-1995.
No other former president in the nearly 50 year history of the Fifth Republic has been questioned by a judge investigating criminal activities.
Chirac was interviewed as a "temoin assiste" or material witness, half way between an ordinary witness and a suspect.
Convictions of officials of his former party have already proved that Chirac's rise to the Presidency was, at least partially, funded illegally.
The question remains how much Chirac knew about it.
He may face formal accusations in the months to come.
Legal proceedings could drag on for years.
Even if convicted, Chirac is unlikely to face more than a suspended jail sentence.
However, the process of investigation could be deeply humiliating for the former President, who stood down in May after 12 years in office.
Chirac therefore took the unusual step yesterday of publishing a "Letter to the People of France" in the newspaper Le Monde to try to place the investigations in context.
Without admitting that he has been personally involved, Chirac said the alleged embezzlement of taxpayers' money must be seen against the background of muddled and ever-changing laws on party financing in France before 1995.
"The politicians in charge at the time acted with integrity and with the general interest at heart," Chirac wrote.
It has already been proved in court that, while he was mayor, Paris town hall paid the salaries of officials who worked for his now defunct centre-right party, the Rassemblement pour la Republique (RPR).
Several former RPR leaders, including the former prime minister Alain Juppe, have already been convicted of, in effect, stealing public funds by paying people who were not working for the city.
They have received suspended prison terms.
Chirac could not be accused, or even questioned, at the time because he was immune from legal proceedings while President of the Republic.
An investigating judge, Alain Philibeaux, therefore questioned him yesterday.
Chirac also faces questioning by judges conducting several other investigations into financial chicanery at the Paris town hall.
One of these investigations also involves so called "fake jobs".
Others involve kick-backs, or payments in kind, in return for preferential treatment in the allocation of town hall contracts.
Chirac's lawyers have said that he is ready to cooperate with judges investigating all events before he became President in 1995.
He is still claiming presidential immunity, however, for any actions taken "in the course of his duties" as President.
On this basis, Chirac is refusing to answer questions in the so-called "Clearstream Affair", the alleged smearing of the future President, Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003-4.
He is also refusing to help judges investigating an alleged cover-up of the murder of the French judge, Bernard Borrel in Djibouti in 1995.
In his Letter to the French People yesterday, Chirac said: "I am ready to testify and to respond, both before (public) opinion, and to the judges. In both cases, I will do so in good faith."
Between 1988 and 1995, he said, France had passed several laws on party financing.
The country had moved uneasily from "a system of customs and arrangements" to "a regime clearly laid out by the law.""In a spirit of clarity and responsibility, I want to remind the magistrates of this context, without which nothing can be understood."
- INDEPENDENT
