A French court on Thursday acquitted former prime minister Edouard Balladur on corruption charges after he was accused of using kickbacks from an arms deal but handed a suspended jail term to his former defence minister.

The verdict by the Law Court of the Republic (CJR), which sits to try serving and former ministers for alleged violations committed in office, came just days after ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted for corruption.

Balladur, 91, had been accused of funnelling illicit commissions from arms deals to his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1995.

His former defence minister Francois Leotard, 78, was however convicted of complicity in the misuse of assets and handed a suspended two-year prison term and a fine of 100,000 euros ($120,000).

Neither was present in court for the verdict.

Balladur and Leotard, both right-wingers, were charged in 2017 with “complicity in the misuse of corporate assets” over the sale of submarines to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia between 1993 and 1995.

The verdicts came hot on the heels of a corruption conviction for former president Sarkozy on Monday which stunned France and has led to a debate about the extent of political corruption.

That judgement meant that both of the last heads of states from France’s right-wing party now called The Republicans (LR) — Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy — have criminal convictions.

Sarkozy has vowed to appeal and clear his name.

Swiss cash

The allegations against Balladur and Leotard came to light during an investigation into a 2002 bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, that targeted a bus transporting French engineers.

Fifteen people were killed in the attack, including 11 engineers working on the submarine contract, with the Al-Qaeda terror network initially suspected of carrying out the assault.

But the focus shifted and French investigators began to consider whether the bombing had been carried out as revenge for a halt in commission payments for the arms deals.

Balladur lost his 1995 presidential bid to rival Chirac who allegedly cut off the payments negotiated by the previous government.

Leotard was accused of having created an “opaque network” of intermediaries who took commissions on contracts signed with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and then paid back some of the money with illicit cash transfers.

Prosecutors alleged that the commissions totalled 550 million francs, or 117 million euros in today’s money, some of which was funnelled back to Balladur’s campaign.

At the centre of the case was a deposit of 10.25 million francs in cash made into Balladur’s campaign account three days after his electoral defeat in 1995.

Balladur claimed the money came from donations from supporters and merchandise sales, but prosecutors linked the money to cash withdrawals in Switzerland made by a Lebanese-French intermediary who took commissions on the arms deals.

Ziad Takieddine, long active in French right-wing circles, fled to Lebanon last June after a Paris court sentenced him and another middleman, Abdul Rahman El-Assir, to five years in prison over their role in the “Karachi” kickbacks.

Three others were also convicted but have announced appeals.

“I have a completely free conscience,” Balladur told the court during his interrogation.

Takieddine has also made — and retracted — claims that he delivered suitcases stuffed with cash from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi to Sarkozy’s chief of staff to help with the ex-president’s 2007 presidential campaign.

Those claims are the subject of a separate investigation into Sarkozy.

Combative Sarkozy

On Monday, the 66-year-old ex-president was found to have formed a “corruption pact” with his lawyer Thierry Herzog to convince a judge to obtain and share information about yet another inquiry into his campaign financing.

Sarkozy, who has been dogged with investigations since leaving office in 2007, denies the charges and has vowed to clear his name with an appeal.

In two interviews Wednesday, he lambasted the verdict and said he was mulling filing a complaint with Europe’s top rights court.

“I never betrayed the trust of the French people,” France’s president from 2007 to 2012 told TF1 channel in a primetime interview on Wednesday evening.

(AFP)

A French court found former president Nicolas Sarkozy guilty on Monday of trying to bribe a judge and of influence peddling, making him the second head of state in modern-day France to be convicted of corruption.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty of offering a plum job in Monaco to a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.

He was sentenced to three years in jail, including two years suspended.

The sentence means it is unlikely Sarkozy will physically go to prison, a punishment that in France usually applies to custodial terms above two years.

The court said Sarkozy will be entitled to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet.

Sarkozy has 10 days to appeal the ruling.

The same sentence was handed down to his co-defendants – lawyer Thierry Herzog and judge Gilbert Azibert.

The former president and his lawyer were found guilty of seeking to bribe judge Azibert for information on an inquiry into claims the former leader had received illicit payments from L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt during his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

The state’s case was based on wiretaps of conversations between Herzog and Sarkozy, with prosecutors accusing him of “using secret telephone lines” to cover up his attempt to infiltrate the court.

Prosecutors said it had been established “with certainty” that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case on an unofficial line to his friend Herzog.

One conversation “overwhelmingly” showed that Sarkozy had promised to intervene to get Azibert a post in Monaco, they said.

Azibert, who was a senior adviser at France’s highest appeals court at the time, never got the job in Monaco.

Sarkozy’s lawyers argued this pointed to the absence of corruption but prosecutors said French law makes no distinction between a successful corruption attempt and a failed one.

Other cases pending

Sarkozy, who was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing in the Bettencourt affair, still faces a raft of other legal woes.

Allegations that he received millions of euros from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for his 2007 election campaign are still being investigated, and he is also accused of fraudulently overspending in his failed 2012 reelection bid.

In January, prosecutors opened another probe into alleged influence-peddling by Sarkozy over his advisory activities in Russia.

News website Mediapart said the probe targeted a payment by Russian insurance firm Reso-Garantia of 3 million euros in 2019 when Sarkozy was working as an adviser, well after leaving office.

Sarkozy’s long-running legal travails helped sink his comeback bid for the 2017 presidential vote, but he has surfed on a wave of popularity since announcing his retirement from politics in 2018.

Only one other French president, Sarkozy’s political mentor Jacques Chirac, was put on trial after leaving office, but he was excused from having to attend his 2011 corruption trial because of ill health.

Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence over the creation of ghost jobs at the Paris city hall to fund his party when he was mayor.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)

A French court is to hand down its verdict in the corruption trial of former president Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday, with prosecutors demanding prison time for the 66-year-old.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, is accused of offering a plum job in Monaco to a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.

The former president told the court he had “never committed the slightest act of corruption”.

Prosecutors called for him to be jailed for four years and serve a minimum of two, and asked for the same punishment for his co-defendants — lawyer Thierry Herzog and judge Gilbert Azibert.

“The events would not have occurred if a former president, as well as a lawyer, had kept in mind the magnitude, the responsibility, and the duties of his office,” prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon told the court as the trial was wound up in December.

The graft and influence-peddling charges — among several legal cases against him — carry a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of one million euros ($1.2 million).

‘With certainty’

Prosecutors say Sarkozy and Herzog tried to bribe judge Azibert for information on an inquiry into claims the former leader had received illicit payments from L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt during his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

The state’s case is based on wiretaps of conversations between Herzog and Sarkozy, with prosecutors accusing him of “using secret telephone lines” to cover up his attempt to infiltrate the court.

Prosecutor Celine Guillet said it had been established “with certainty” that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case on an unofficial line to his friend Herzog.

One conversation “overwhelmingly” showed that Sarkozy had promised to intervene to get Azibert a post in Monaco, she said.

Sarkozy’s lawyer Jacqueline Laffont lashed out at the flaws and “emptiness” of the prosecutor’s accusations, with the defence also claiming that the tapped conversations had been just “chats between friends”.

Azibert, who was a senior adviser at France’s highest appeals court at the time, never got the job in Monaco.

Sarkozy’s lawyers argued this pointed to the absence of corruption but prosecutors said French law makes no distinction between a successful corruption attempt and a failed one.

More to come

Sarkozy was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing in the Bettencourt affair but still faces a raft of other legal woes.

Allegations that he received millions of euros from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi for his 2007 election campaign are still being investigated, and he is also accused of fraudulently overspending in his failed 2012 reelection bid.

In January, prosecutors opened another probe into alleged influence-peddling by Sarkozy over his advisory activities in Russia.

News website Mediapart said the probe targeted a payment by Russian insurance firm Reso-Garantia of 3 million euros in 2019 when Sarkozy was working as an adviser, well after leaving office.

Sarkozy’s long-running legal travails helped sink his comeback bid for the 2017 presidential vote, but he has surfed on a wave of popularity since announcing his retirement from politics in 2018.

Only one other French president, Sarkozy’s political mentor Jacques Chirac, was put on trial after leaving office, but he was excused from having to attend his 2011 corruption trial because of ill health.

Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence over the creation of ghost jobs at the Paris city hall to fund his party when he was mayor.

(AFP)

Lorry drivers returning to France from Britain will not now need to have a coronavirus test if they have spent less than 48 hours in the country, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Sunday.

France demanded in December that lorry drivers travelling from Britain to France must carry a negative Covid test result to reduce the spread of a more infectious coronavirus variant that had been found in Kent in southeast England.

“I’ve agreed more flexibility in testing for hauliers travelling from the UK to France,” Shapps said on Twitter.

“From 11 p.m. (2300 GMT) tonight, lorries returning to France from UK having spent less than 48 hours in the UK will no longer require a coronavirus test.”

(REUTERS)

Protests against the imprisonment of a Spanish rap artist have turned violent in Barcelona as thousands of demonstrators called for his release for the fifth consecutive night across Spain.

Angry protests initially began on Tuesday after police detained Pablo Hasél, and took him to prison to start serving a nine-month sentence for “glorifying terrorism” and insulting royalty in his music and on Twitter.

Since then, protesters have turned out every night, clashing with police in Hasél’s home region of Catalonia. Angry protests later began to spread to Madrid and beyond.

Police were deployed en masse, with dozens of police vans lining the streets of Madrid and Barcelona.

About 6,000 demonstrators began gathering in Barcelona early Saturday evening, and clashes broke out as they started marching towards police headquarters, according to local police.

Protesters hurled projectiles, cans and firecrackers at police, who fired foam bullets to disperse the crowd, the Catalan regional police said on Twitter.

Angry protesters attacked shops on Barcelona’s most prestigious shopping street, Passeig de Gracia, smashing windows and looting stores, according to police.

Officers arrested nine people across Catalonia, six of them in Barcelona. 

Nine people were also injured, two of whom were taken to hospital.

More than 60 people have so far been arrested across Catalonia since Hasél was detained, police said.

One woman lost an eye during clashes in Barcelona, triggering calls from politicians to investigate police tactics.

Demonstrations in Madrid, however, were largely peaceful but in the northern cities of Pamplona and Lleida, police clashed with protesters.

Around 400 people gathered under a heavy police presence in Madrid clapping and chanting, “Free Pablo Hasél!”

Hasél was given the prison sentence in 2018 for “glorification of terrorism” through more than 60 tweets he published on Twitter between 2014 and 2016.

He was also fined $30,000 for insults, libel and slander for tweets about the former king Juan Carlos I and for accusing police of torturing and killing demonstrators and refugees.

Source: Presstv

Yet another phone call comes in for Artur Palma, who is straining to cope with all the bodies piling up at his suburban Lisbon funeral parlour.

The call is from a nearby retirement home, prompting Palma to send his employee Jose Santos to collect the latest Covid-19 victim and drive her body back to the Velhinho funeral parlour he runs in Amadora.

Santos suits up in line with Portugal’s latest health guidelines: head-to-toe white suit, gloves and surgical mask. Then, he sets off in his hearse.

Faced with an explosion in Covid deaths during a virulent third wave in the last few weeks, Palma says that the demands on the business and staff are taking their toll.

“It’s real chaos. There are so many dead people we don’t have enough room for them all,” Palma says.

“It’s an enormous weight at all levels, physically and psychologically. We sleep little and we are reaching our limit. We are reaching the breaking point,” he adds.

Velhinho employees now make three or four trips a week to retirement homes to collect the dead, Santos, 62, tells AFP, at the wheel of his hearse.

That is about three times the number of deaths the funeral parlour handled in January 2020.

According to data compiled by AFP, over the last two weeks Portugal has recorded the largest number of infections and deaths relative to its population of any country in the world.

Over the year since the pandemic began, Portugal ranks seventh in the world for infections per capita but is lower down the list for deaths per capita.

The disease has claimed just over 13,000 lives in the country of 10 million people, including more than 5,500 in January alone.

A second general lockdown was introduced on January 15 in a bid to slow infections.

– ‘We feel it at home’ –

At the retirement home, Santos and a colleague place the body in a mortuary bag and wheel it on a stretcher to the hearse.

“It really has to happen like this from now on,” Santos says, stressing the importance of respecting health measures at each stage of preparing the body for burial.

Back at the funeral parlour, amid stacks of new ornate wooden coffins, Santos and Palma complete their protective gear by pulling on medical shoe covers, goggles, overalls and gas masks.

“We absolutely must stick to using this protective equipment. I myself put on three pairs of gloves. They are made for high-risk situations,” Palma says.

Covid-19 victims are wrapped in a shroud before being placed in the coffin.

Their bodies are not embalmed because of the contagion risk but disinfectant is sprayed everywhere.

When the coffin is sealed, Velhinho staff cover the joints with an adhesive tape, which, in turn, is sealed with several layers of cellophane.

The deceased is then put back in a refrigerated room, full of Covid victims.

Palma himself has lost family members to the disease.

“With Covid-19, I have already lost my aunt, my cousin, my father and my grandfather,” he says.

At the Velhinho funeral parlour, there are a total of just four people to cope with the recent surge in bodies and the work is having a high personal cost.

“It’s very difficult and we feel it at home with our families. Fortunately, they are there to support us,” Santos says, smoking a cigarette.

Source:  AFP

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been urgently admitted to hospital in Monaco because of heart problems, his personal doctor told Reuters on Thursday.

Alberto Zangrillo said he saw Berlusconi on Monday and decided to transfer him to a nearby hospital because he did not think it prudent to bring him to Italy, which is some 15 km (10 miles) from the small city-state.

Italy’s ANSA news agency first reported the news. It was not immediately clear if the health emergency had been overcome.

The 84-year-old media tycoon underwent major heart surgery in 2016 and has also survived prostate cancer.

Last September he was hospitalised after contracting coronavirus. He later told reporters that the virus had posed “the most dangerous challenge” of his life.

Berlusconi remains the head of the opposition Forza Italia party. His illness comes as Italy has been hit by political chaos after a junior coalition party quit the government, depriving it of a majority in parliament.

Newspapers have speculated that some Forza Italia lawmakers might agree to help prop up the administration to prevent early elections.

Source: Reuters

As long lorry queues form to enter the European Union (EU) zone in France and some refused entry at ports, businesses are being told to prepare for “significant additional disruption” in the immediate post-Brexit period.

Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, said on Friday (January 08) that disruption at Britain’s border had not been “too profound” yet, but admitted that “It is the case that in the weeks ahead, we expect that there will be significant additional disruption – particularly on the Dover-Calais route”.

Meanwhile, in relation to Northern Ireland (NI), previously Gove had said that trade from mainland Britain to NI “will get worse before it gets better”.

Furthermore, the Danish shipping and logistics company DFDS, one of the busiest in Europe, issued a warning to drivers on Friday (January 08) that many vehicles are being held up or turned away from Dover in Kent and Calais and Dunkirk in France.

The company said in a statement: “We are experiencing a high volume of vehicles being refused and delayed at the Ports of Calais, Dunkerque and Dover, due to incorrect paperwork being presented at check-in”.

It was also revealed this week that more than 50 British retailers, including M&S, face potential tariffs for re-exporting goods to the EU.

It seems that the last-minute deal struck between Downing Street and Brussels on Christmas Eve (December 24) was too short notice for businesses, hauliers and transportation companies to re-adjust their paper work and broader logistics to align with the new post-Brexit reality.

Source: Presstv

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that she has agreed with state governors to extend the country’s current lockdown by three weeks until Jan. 31.

Merkel said they also are tightening curbs on social contacts, in line with measures imposed at the beginning of the pandemic in March. And they called for new restrictions on movement for people living in areas with particularly high infection rates.

The decision came as new coronavirus cases and deaths are running at stubbornly high levels, and officials remain uncertain what effect the Christmas and New Year holidays have had on the situation.

Germany launched a nationwide partial shutdown on Nov. 2, closing restaurants, bars, leisure and sports facilities. That failed to reduce infection figures, and the current lockdown — which closed nonessential shops and schools, and further limited social contacts — took effect Dec. 16. It was initially due to run through Jan. 10.

Germany’s disease control centre on Tuesday reported 944 more COVID-19 deaths, fueling expectations that Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s 16 state governors will extend the country’s lockdown until the end of the month.

Merkel’s meeting with the governors on Tuesday will decide how long the lockdown should go on and to what extent schools will reopen. Another topic high on the agenda will be addressing criticism of the country’s vaccination program amid frustrations over its gradual start.

Vaccinations in Germany and the rest of the 27-nation European Union started over a week ago. In Germany, a nation of 83 million, nearly 265,000 vaccinations had been reported by Monday, the Robert Koch Institute said.

Opposition politicians and even some within Germany’s governing coalition have criticized the EU’s cautious advance ordering of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — the only one so far cleared for use in EU nations. The EU’s medical regulator is also evaluating a vaccine by Moderna.

The country’s health minister has repeatedly said that the vaccinations are progressing as expected and that the slow start is because mobile teams are first going to nursing homes to vaccinate the most vulnerable, which takes more time than inviting people to mass vaccination centers.

Still, in a nod to the heavy pressure, Health Minister Jens Spahn said he has asked the country’s agency in charge of vaccinations if the second shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine could be delayed in order to be able to vaccinate more people right away with a first shot. Britain has embraced such a plan with its vaccinations, but the move is being hotly debated by scientists and governments around the world.

Germany’s new infections remain at more than twice the level of 50 per 100,000 residents over seven days, which the government wants to reach. In part because of lower testing and delayed reporting, it’s not yet clear what effect the Christmas holidays will have on Germany’s new coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Germany has reported 35,518 virus-related deaths overall.

(AP)