Paris (AFP)

"But what's the connection?"

Between digressions and lapses of memory, the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) continued Thursday the difficult questioning of François Léotard, tried in Paris with Edouard Balladur for the financing of the latter's campaign in the 1995 presidential election.

The former Minister of Defense and the former Prime Minister are suspected of having set up in the 1990s a system of illegal retrocommissions linked to major arms contracts with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which would have been used to feed the accounts of the campaign of Mr. Balladur.

This system of "exorbitant" commissions paid to "useless" intermediaries, according to the prosecution, earned the collaborators of MM.

Balladur and Léotard of heavy sentences last June, in the non-ministerial section of this part of the sprawling "Karachi affair".

Judged since Tuesday before the CJR, composed of magistrates and parliamentarians, the two former politicians have both firmly denied any guilt in this case.

Black jeans and navy sweater, planted in front of the desk in the center of the courtroom, Mr. Léotard, 78, patiently listens to President Dominique Pauthe describe the complex negotiations that surrounded the contracts for the sale of submarines in Pakistan.

The court wants details on a note from the services of the Ministry of Defense but comes up against one of the difficulties of this trial: to judge the facts a quarter of a century later.

"So there, you put me a glue Mr. President, it must be twenty-five years", blows the former minister.

"I don't remember", he adds, as he will repeat it ten more times during his interrogation.

"If I had been notified of something irregular, naturally, I would not have accepted that it continue", hastens to specify François Léotard.

"I always thought it was all legal, regular, and in our best interests."

- "The least of my worries" -

When the ex-minister recalls that the practice of commissions to facilitate obtaining a contract were in his legal time, the president clarified: "It is not a question of criticizing the sale of submarines or frigates but (...) agreements made outside these contracts ".

"If it's legal, I assume everything. If it's not legal, I assume nothing", retorts Mr. Léotard.

"And, if it had to be done again, I would do it again", adds on several occasions the one who decided to defend his "honor" himself, without a lawyer.

"These contracts business, excuse me for sounding offhand, but it was the least of my worries", he insists, referring to the "French nuclear", the wars in "Bosnia and Rwanda" or the "wounded soldiers" he was to welcome.

- "Others than you were in charge of it?", Cuts the president, returning to the contracts.

- "Of course".

- "Notably Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres?"

Closest advisor to Mr. Léotard at the time - he was known as "his double" - Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres was sentenced in June to five years in prison, three of which were closed for having imposed the network of intermediaries on industrialists and received money from the sulphurous Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takkiedine for "services" rendered outside the contracts.

He appealed against this judgment, as did his co-defendants.

Attorney General François Molins would like to know how often Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres reported to his minister, and gets annoyed when Mr. Léotard launches in response to a commentary on financial practices in Lebanon.

"Is it possible to have an answer to my question"? The magistrate impatiently.

"The conversations were daily," Mr. Léotard finally replied.

Before embarking on a new digression, this time on his long term as mayor in Fréjus, where he resides.

The president is taken aback.

"But what's the connection?"

The hearing resumes next Wednesday with the questioning of Edouard Balladur.

© 2021 AFP