Former French PM formally named in smear scandal

PARIS, July 27 (Reuters) Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin has been formally placed under investigation by judges examining an alleged plot to smear Nicolas Sarkozy, one of his lawyers said today.

Asked whether Villepin was now formally under investigation, one of his lawyers, Luc Brossollet said: ''Yes, on the expected counts,'' referring to ''complicity in libellous allegations'' and other counts related to faked documents.

Villepin repeated his denials of any involvement in the scandal in which Sarkozy's name appeared on a faked list of accounts purportedly held at Luxembourg-based securities clearing house Clearstream.

''I want to say this morning that at no time did I request an investigation into political personalities and at no time did I participate in a political manoeuvre of any kind,'' he told reporters outside the offices of judges Jean-Marie d'Huy and Henri Pons.

The so-called ''Clearstream affair'' emerged in 2004 when anonymous letters were sent to a magistrate alleging that Sarkozy and other senior politicians held accounts linked to the sale of frigates to Taiwan in 1991.

The allegations proved to be spurious and the focus of investigations switched to who was behind the denunciation, which was apparently aimed at damaging Sarkozy, who won the French presidency in May.

Villepin, a bitter rival, was quickly suspected of pushing French security services to investigate the affair in the hope of uncovering evidence that would damage Sarkozy. He has denied acting improperly.

Accusations against him have been hardened by recent evidence from former intelligence official Philippe Rondot and Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former executive at aerospace group EADS who admitted to being the anonymous informant.

Today, left-wing daily Liberation published what it said were extracts from Gergorin's evidence to judges that Villepin had asked him to transmit the list of accounts to magistrate Renaud Van Ruymbeke, apparently on the instructions of Chirac.

Villepin was foreign affairs and then interior minister at the time and has said that he was simply fulfilling his duties to check rumours of wrongdoing by a cabinet colleague.

He is expected to say that any action he undertook was part of his ministerial responsibilities and should not come under the jurisdiction of ordinary investigating magistrates.

The case, which nearly tore the government apart last year, has underlined the deep hostility that surrounded Sarkozy's rise to take over the centre right in the twilight of Jacques Chirac's 12-year term as president.

REUTERS GT RAI1625