Villepin acquitted in Sarkozy smear trial

Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin was acquitted yesterday on charges of plotting a smear campaign against long-time rival Nicolas Sarkozy to sabotage his presidential bid.

The court ruled there were no grounds to convict the 56-year-old politician of complicity to slander Mr Sarkozy in 2004, when the two men were angling to succeed president Jacques Chirac.

The acquittal was an outright victory for Mr Villepin and a slap for Mr Sarkozy who had reportedly vowed to hang those responsible for the scandal by a "butcher's hook".

"After many years of ordeal, my innocence has been recognised," Mr Villepin said after walking free out of the Paris courtroom.

The silver-haired politician said he harboured "no grudges" and now looked forward to "serving the French people and contributing in a spirit of unity to the recovery of France".

Mr Villepin is banking that the acquittal will help re-launch his political career as he sets his sights on the 2012 presidential vote, at a time when Mr Sarkozy is struggling with poor approval ratings.

The verdict coincidentally came on Mr Sarkozy's 55th birthday and while the president was chairing a meeting at the Elysee Palace to discuss measures to curb France's ballooning deficit.

Mr Villepin and four other defendants were accused of using falsified bank accounts to discredit Mr Sarkozy ahead of his party's nomination for the 2007 presidential vote, which he won.

Mr Sarkozy's name was on the bogus list of hundreds of account holders at the Clearstream financial clearing house who allegedly took bribes from the sale of French warships to Taiwan.

Mr Villepin was cleared on all four counts in the case dubbed France's trial of the decade: complicity to slander, to use forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust.

Mr Sarkozy, who was a civil plaintiff in the case, announced he would not appeal the decision but noted that the court had recognized that there had been a "serious conspiracy" despite Mr Villepin's acquittal.

Three other defendants were convicted: ex-aerospace executive Jean-Louis Gergorin who admitted to leaking the fake list to investigators, Imad Lahoud who confessed to adding Mr Sarkozy's name to the list and accountant Florian Bourges, who obtained data on account holders that were later falsified.

Journalist Denis Robert, who introduced Mr Bourges to Mr Lahoud, was acquitted. The sensational trial opened in September in the courtroom where queen Marie Antoinette was sentenced to the guillotine in 1793, with Mr Villepin accusing Mr Sarkozy of pursuing a personal vendetta against him. Dubbed the Clearstream affair, the scandal made frontpage news across France when it broke in 2005 and Mr Sarkozy, then Mr Chirac's ambitious finance minister, long suspected that Mr Villepin was behind an attempt to sabotage his Elysee bid.