Neither responsible nor guilty.
As he had wished, Edouard Balladur cracked this Wednesday, January 20 of an introductory statement before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) which has been judging him since Tuesday for the alleged illegal financing of his lost presidential campaign of 1995 .
Gray suit and purple tie, the former Prime Minister defended both his honor and his probity during this statement read in a rather confident voice for a man of 91 years.
"I find myself in an unexpected situation and, in truth, paradoxical", argues the former host of Matignon, referring to his reform of January 1995 on the financing of electoral campaigns.
“I would be a character of a singular perversity if I had, at the same time, claimed to clean up our public life and tried to pollute it by setting up an immoral electoral financing system intended to favor me.
"
"Assumptions that nothing attests"
In the evening of a life largely devoted to politics, Edouard Balladur speaks of this affair, which appeared in the wake of the investigation into the Karachi attack in 2002, as a stain.
"My trial has been open to public opinion for more than 25 years", he is moved, convinced that his responsibility "is now a sort of historical truth".
Bruised, the defendant prefers to don the costume of the victim - "nothing was spared me" - and, like other politicians before him in the same position, denounces a "dependent" instruction.
Basically, without being able to be contradicted at this stage, Edouard Balladur denounces a fragile accusation.
"It is a file based on rumors, approximations, connections, coincidences, on assumptions that nothing attests", he asserts.
The Paris Criminal Court, which ruled in 2020 the non-ministerial part of this case, considered that there was in the file sufficiently solid elements to pronounce heavy sentences against the defendants, including his former chief of staff. and campaign director Nicolas Bazire.
The charge rests on two pillars.
Edouard Balladur - and his former Minister of Defense François Léotard, tried by his side - is accused of having imposed a second network of intermediaries in the conclusion of gigantic arms contracts with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in 1994. It is the famous “network K” of the Franco-Lebanese Ziad Takieddine, of which one of the witnesses heard this Wednesday explained how much it appeared useless and greedy.
"I have never given the slightest instruction in connection with these commissions", evacuates the former tenant of Matignon, according to which this arbitration was not intended to go back to him.
"Yes, I trust the truth"
Secondly, he is suspected of having benefited from retrocommissions to fund his campaign accounts.
The deposit of 10.25 million francs in cash on April 26, 1995, is at the heart of the matter.
The cash that has pledged his campaign to the tune of 13 million francs "came mainly from collections made during meetings and numerous campaign meetings," says Edouard Balladur staunchly.
These explanations had at the time made tick the rapporteurs of the Constitutional Council but, as he points out, the Sages had in the end validated his campaign accounts.
The former president of the body Roland Dumas had however belatedly recognized that they were - like those of Jacques Chirac - "manifestly irregular".
As he concluded, the former leader urged his judges - professional magistrates and parliamentarians - to do him justice.
“Yes, I trust the truth,” he says with a last breath.
The Court of Justice of the Republic has three weeks to forge one.
