The 'trial of the decade' opened yesterday in Paris amid much media fanfare. Le procès Clearstream puts former PM Dominic de Villepin in the dock. Clearstream (named after the Luxembourg bank used in the laundering of slush money from arms deals) seems something of a misnomer for an affair about as murky as sewage water.
De Villepin has several other co-accuseds, but it is the former PM who dominates the headlines, and he started with a bang yesterday, making a statement outside the court claiming that he was only there because of the will and obsession of one man - Nicolas Sarkozy, denouncing the trial as a political show trial. Indeed, the whole affair is being characterized as a battle to the death between two sworn enemies.
It all goes back to 2004 when a list of names of Clearstream account holders alleged to have received bribes relating to an arms deal was leaked. It eventually turned out that the list was part genuine, part fabrication. Among the false names was Sarkozy (albeit indirectly, using his Hungarian patronymic names). De Villepin stands accused of deliberately adding Sarkozy's name to the list with the aim of torpedoing his bid for the Presidency. The murky world of politics...
Elsewhere, le Corbeau has been arrested. The suspect has apparently confessed to being the author of dozens of threatening letters, ominously accompanied by a bullet, sent to a number of politicians (including, inevitably, Monsieur le Président) over the past couple of years. And there's a post office strike in France today. Good excuse for delaying sending out more agent queries then - another rejection in the post today...
Otherwise, had a pleasant 36 hour trip to Blighty over the weekend. Flight to Gatwick Saturday morning, beer in the London sunshine at lunch, bright game and lovely result at the home of football in the afternoon, tasty curry with JeB in the evening, successfully evaded the security system and got into the Margarita Man's empty house for a bed for the night, then flight home from Stansted on Sunday morning. Yesterday la bienheureuse got her own back by flying off to Brussels for three days.
