French appeal court judges dealt a blow Tuesday to attempts to force President Jacques Chirac to testify at an inquiry into alleged graft during his time as mayor of Paris, lawyers said.
Lawyers at Paris' appeal court said that judges had thrown out a witness summons issued last year, but ignored by the president, on procedural grounds and ordered the replacement of the judge heading the inquiry.
Nothing prevents the new magistrate named to head the seven-year-old inquiry from continuing to probe the alleged links between kick-backs on public works contracts, party financing and Chirac.
But the decision was welcomed as a political victory for the president, whose supporters claimed it showed that the investigators had ploughed on with an illegal inquiry in a bid to smear the head of state.
Serge Lepeltier, secretary general of Chirac's Gaullist RPR party, said the decision proved the case "did not merit such a fuss."
"It's proof that this agitation was motivated by politics and a desire for publicity aimed at tarnishing one man," he said.
The court on Tuesday took the case out of the hands of investigating judge Eric Halphen, who summoned Chirac on April 4 last year, and handed it to another magistrate, Armand Riberolles, the lawyers said.
The decision came after lawyers acting for two minor suspects in the wide-ranging inquiry attacked the Halphen inquiry, accuisng it of going beyond its powers.
"This case has been conducted in an illegal and irregular way. The judge was not competent to place people under investigation," lawyer Thierry Herzog said.
The case is one of several investigations into alleged corruption in the Paris region during Chirac's time as mayor between 1977 and 1995.
Lawyers are probing claims that developers paid kick-backs to political parties, including Chirac's RPR, in exchange for lucrative public housing contracts.
The state prosecutor's office asked Halphen in June last year to drop parts of his inquiry after complaints from some of the suspects that he had exceeded his powers.
The judge continued his investigation, however, and seized a video in which a deceased RPR accountant, Jean-Claude Mery, directly implicated Chirac in receiving illegal donations.
Tuesday's judgement overturns the seizure of the video and subsequent witness summonses, including Chirac's, but the orders could be reactivated by Riberolles if proper procedures are followed, legal experts said -- PARIS (AFP)
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