Almost 25 years after the events, the former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur is tried, from Tuesday January 19, within the framework of the financial aspect of the Karachi affair, of the name of an attack committed in this Pakistani city on the 8th May 2002, killing in particular 11 French
At 91, the disciple of former President Georges Pompidou will have to answer for suspicions of hidden financing of his 1995 presidential campaign before the Court of Justice of the Republic.
Suspected of having fueled his campaign accounts thanks to retrocommissions to the tune of 13 million francs (nearly 2 million euros), aside from contracts for submarines in Pakistan and frigates in Saudi Arabia, he was indicted in 2017 for "complicity in the abuse of corporate assets and concealment" in the context of this sprawling affair.
A controlled course
Accusations that tarnish the course and career of Édouard Balladur, whose apparent seriousness and serenity had contributed to maintaining the image of an honest servant of the State, as described by his relatives.
A controlled course which could have confined him to playing the supporting roles, until his decision to run for the presidential election in 1995, against his friend and right-wing leader Jacques Chirac.
Born in 1929 in Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey), into a Catholic family from the Armenian Caucasus and belonging to the upper middle class, Édouard Balladur and his family settled in Marseille in 1934. His higher education then lead him to Paris on the benches of Sciences-Po, then those of ENA (France-Africa promotion), which then allow him to join the Council of State.
Édouard Balladur studied in the shadows, before entering as a technical advisor, at the age of 35, in the office of Georges Pompidou, then Prime Minister of General de Gaulle.
He will then follow the one he considers his mentor to the Élysée in 1969, where he will occupy the positions of Deputy Secretary General, then Secretary General of the Presidency in 1973.
After a stint in the private sector, he returned to the political sphere in the 1980s, in the wake of Jacques Chirac, a former Pompidolian like him, who became one of the essential leaders of the right.
Prime Minister Édouard Balladur (right) and RPR President Jacques Chirac during a lunch, April 20, 1993, at the Hôtel de Matignon in Paris.
© Pascal Pavani, AFP
Completely unknown to the French, and just elected deputy for Paris in the legislative elections of March 1986, he was appointed Minister of State for the Economy and Finance, in the first cohabitation government formed by Jacques Chirac during the presidency of François Mitterrand.
Édouard Balladur's invariably courteous and monotonous tone, his chastened language and his airs of a grand bourgeois with striped shirts, contrast with the style and charisma of Jacques Chirac within the RPR, where some executives give him acid nicknames such as " The cardinal "," Ballamou "or even" His Sufficiency ".
Married and father of four sons, Édouard Balladur, who flees controversy and sterile debates, will return to the front of the stage in 1993, after an overwhelming victory for the right in the legislative elections.
Jacques Chirac had decided to leave Matignon to his former Minister of the Economy and Finance, who never publicly expressed the slightest personal ambition, in order to prepare for his side the presidential election of 1995, of which he wants to be the natural candidate for the right.
Intoxicated by a flattering popularity rating
Appointed Prime Minister by François Mitterrand, Édouard Balladur enjoyed a flattering popularity rating throughout his mission and began to dream of an Elyos destiny, as pollsters and his close collaborators promised him, including Nicolas Sarkozy, then his budget minister.
The announcement of his candidacy for the 1995 presidential election, from his office, during an 8-minute televised address, is a cataclysm on the right, and will cause, for nearly twenty years, a rift between Balladurians and Chiraquians that will weigh on the modern history of his camp.
Reserved, distant, and suspicious during the campaign, Édouard Balladur, who presents himself as a rally candidate, witnesses a rise of Jacques Chirac in the last weeks of the campaign.
A deal that will not be denied at the polls.
He was beaten in the first round, obtaining 18.6% of the vote, behind the socialist Lionel Jospin (23.3%) and Jacques Chirac (20.8%).
EM application Balladur
Two weeks later, he witnessed the triumph of his rival and former friend of 30 years, who would endeavor to ban the majority of Édouard Balladur's supporters from political life for a few years.
The Karachi case
Beyond the bitterness of the defeat, the echoes of his unsuccessful campaign of 1995 will come to haunt an Édouard Balladur retired from politics in 2007, but who is still said to be influential with Nicolas Sarkozy.
The first evocations of alleged retrocommissions appear in 2009, when the examining magistrate Marc Trévidic, in charge of the investigation into the Karachi attack, discovers a lead leading to a Franco-Pakistani dispute.
It is linked to the end of commissions paid by France on the sidelines of the sale of submarines, carried out by ... the government of Édouard Balladur in 1994.
In 2013, the investigation led by Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke led to proof of a link between the commissions paid to foreign intermediaries on the sidelines of armaments contracts concluded by France in 1994 and 1995, and the alleged hidden financing. of the presidential campaign of Édouard Balladur.
One of the hypotheses then considered is that the end of the payment of the commissions would have caused the attack of Karachi, on May 8, 2002, in retaliation against France.
This judgment was ordered by Jacques Chirac in 1996, warned that this flow of money could have benefited his rival Édouard Balladur, via a system of retrocommissions.
Claiming to be eager to "face his judges and answer their questions", Édouard Balladur has always denied any involvement in this case, which has already given rise to prison sentences.
He faces up to five years in prison, even if the Court of Justice of the Republic, which is the subject of criticism for its slowness and leniency, has never sentenced ministers to prison terms.
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