A Paris investigating magistrate has overruled a senior public prosecutor and set up a formal inquiry into the £1,4-million grocery bill claimed by President Jacques Chirac and his wife during eight of the 18 years that the president spent as mayor of the French capital.
Judge Philippe Courroye said on Wednesday that the alleged crimes of fraud and misuse of public funds were not subject to a 10-year statute of limitations, as the chief Paris prosecutor, Yves Bot, had argued, because they may have been committed ”by a person in a position of public authority”.
While Chirac cannot be prosecuted (or questioned) as long as he remains in office, the decision could affect his wife, Bernadette, who may have to explain how the couple could consume up to £100 of fruit and veg and £37 of tea and coffee a day, mostly paid for in cash and justified with receipts that, in many cases, appear to have been doctored.
The inquiry follows a complaint filed last year by the current Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, after a damning report by town hall accountants that threw a new light on the Chiracs’ spending habits while they occupied the mayoral apartments.
Because most of the files from the early years of the Chirac tenure were shredded before municipal elections in 2000, the report covers only the years 1987 to 1995. But the evidence looks strong: during those eight years alone, the Chiracs claimed for, and were reimbursed, £1,45-million for their personal food bills.
About £950 000 of the bills, which are entirely separate from the mayor’s annual £1-million entertainment budget, were paid in cash apparently taken from the proceeds of the town hall’s staff bar.
The money was reimbursed in exchange for receipts that ”in many instances give rise to suspicions of substantial fraud”, the report says.
A £1 500 bill for foie gras and truffles had plainly been tampered with. ”The initial sum appears to have been £500, with the figure 1 added at a later date,” the auditors said.
Another bill, for £375 in 1994, was reimbursed ”four times that year, and then once the following year, on the basis of carbon copies of different colours and a modified date”.
The corners of many receipts had been cut off to remove the date, the report adds, while receipts for purchases worth about £4 000 from the luxury Paris delicatessen, Fauchon, ”appear purely and simply to be fakes”.
The president, whose name has been mentioned in half a dozen other scandals ranging from illegal party funding schemes to jobs-for-the-boys scams, has so far declined to comment on the allegations beyond saying that he is confident the police ”will do their job properly”. — Â