NEWS,03.07.2012

Sarkozy's home raided over link with L'Oreal hieress

 

Police raided the home and offices of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy today as part of a judicial inquiry into financial relations between his political camp and the richest woman in France, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.It was Sarkozy's first legal tangle since he was unseated in a May 6 election after five years in office, during which he enjoyed presidential immunity from legal pursuit. That cover expired in mid-June.Sarkozy's lawyer, Thierry Herzog, said the raids a day after his client had left for Canada on holiday would show nothing and that he had already supplied information to investigators that debunked suspicions of secret meetings with Bettencourt."These raids ... will as expected prove futile," Herzog said in a statement.The Bettencourt probe centres on financial relations between Sarkozy's centre-right UMP party and the billionaire heiress of the L'Oreal cosmetics empire. In one strand, investigators are trying to establish whether Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign in particular was funded illicitly.Herzog said magistrates looking into whether Sarkozy had received campaign funds from the now mentally fragile Bettencourt had been supplied with diary details of all Sarkozy appointments in 2007.Those details, he said, "prove that the purported 'secret meetings' with Madame Liliane Bettencourt were impossible".Sarkozy's predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who ruled France from 1995 to 2007, was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence in December after a court found him guilty of misusing public funds for political purposes when he was mayor of Paris.Francois Hollande, who unseated Sarkozy in May, has vowed to change the rules in France under his tenure so that the law no longer treats presidents differently from other civilians regarding matters that predate their time in office.The 57-year-old Sarkozy, who has adopted a low profile since his defeat, faces a number of legal tangles now that he is no longer head of state.Days after his constitutionally guaranteed immunity expired in mid-June, a lawyer announced a formal legal complaint in another affair with a political funding link in which he wants Sarkozy to answer questions.That complaint came from a lawyer acting for victims of a 2002 bombing in Karachi that investigators believe may be linked to a long-running corruption and illegal party-financing case.In the so-called "Karachi Affair", investigators are trying to unravel dealings by middlemen and possible kickbacks linked to France's sale of Agosta class submarines to Pakistan in the 1990s.That contract was negotiated and signed while Sarkozy was a minister and spokesman for a politician who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1995, Edouard Balladur.

 

Britain arms London with missiles in Olympic buildup

Britain will deploy missile defence systems in residential areas of London, including on the roof of a block of apartments, to defend against an aircraft attack on the Olympic Games, the government confirmed today.The plan has angered people leaving nearby who have launched legal action to block the move, which they say will endanger lives due to the possibility of accidents and the prospect that aircraft could be shot down over densely populated areas."This is the biggest sporting event in the world, and with that comes the huge responsibility to deliver it safely and securely," interior minister Theresa May said of the Olympic Games, which begin on July 27.The anti-aircraft missile systems - one large and mounted on a trailer, the other handheld - will be deployed at six locations around the Olympic Park in the east of the capital, including on top of two residential buildings and in parkland.The Stop the Olympic Missiles campaign says the plan will turn the games into a "festival of the global security industry", according to the group's website."The government is ignoring public opinion," said campaigner Chris Nineham."The vast majority of people in east London do not want these missiles. The government decision flies in the face of good sense and our campaign will go on," he told Reuters.Britain's defence ministry said it acknowledged that the defence system would have "implications" for those on the ground, but that missile deployment would be a "last resort option" to minimise casualties and damage from an aerial attack.

NEWS,21.04.2012.

France goes to first round of poll

 

After hectic months ot the hustings, France’s presidential contenders go to the first round ofelections on Sunday to whittle down the field of 10 to two frontrunners.The chances of incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy winning look increasingly bleak as Socialist candidate Francois Hollande has notched up a commanding lead over UMP ruling party, according to the latest polls conducted in France ahead of the first round. The polls showed Hollande had opened a five-point lead for the first round of voting and a 16-point lead in voting intentions for the May 6 run-off. With those poll results, the Sarkozy camp was hit with the most damning opinion poll for weeks, but somehow Sarkozy briefly overtook Hollande in polls for round one following the Toulouse murders by an Islamist gunman. All in all, however, Hollande has made steady gains in recent days in most polls, with one survey giving him 29 per cent of the first round vote against 24 per cent for Sarkozy.As if the poll showings were not daunting enough, Sarkozy’s campaign was also hit by a potentially damaging revelation when it was revealed that his top donors met last Sunday at the Hotel Crillon, one of Paris’s most expensive and select venues. That meeting was in many quarters considered a major public relations gaffe given the incumbent’s recent attempts to shed his “president of the rich” tag.“That sums up his presidency,” sneered a jubilant Hollande. “He started in a top restaurant, Le Fouquet’s, and ends up in a grand hotel with the same guests.”Even as Sarkozy’s hopes appeared to crumble, some of his closest right-wing ministers openly came out against him, with Fadela Amara, the former town planning minister and a one-time star of Sarkozy’s ethnically diverse “rainbow” cabinet, becoming the latest leading political figure to desert the embattled incumbent.The incumbent’s popularity had earlier dropped dramatically following assertions that Jacques Chirac would vote for Hollande, a development that reportedly made Sarkozy’s popularity rating drop lower than any other French president seeking re-election.After Amara’s desertion other former ministers close to Chirac followed suit, including Brigitte Girardin, the former overseas minister, who said she wished to “end policies that for five years have weakened the country and divided the French”. At the same time Corinne Lepage, an ecologist environment minister in a previous centre-right government, announced that she would back Hollande, arguing that Sarkozy had veered too far to the right. The avalanche of desertions continued with Azouz Begag, the equal opportunities junior minister and Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the former culture minister joining the list of those jumping ship.

Mass rally against Czech regime

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered for an anti-government rally in Prague’s central Wenceslas Square on Saturday as the centre-right ruling coalition was teetering on the verge of collapse.Unions, pensioners, student associations and others angered by austerity cuts and graft scandals teamed up for what they said would be the biggest protest yet against the cabinet of right-wing leader Petr Necas.“The police estimate about 80-90,000 people are in Wenceslas Square right now,” Prague police spokeswoman Eva Kropacova.Union leader Jaroslav Zavadil put the number of protesters at 120,000 before lambasting the cabinet for “humiliating the powerless with its anti-social reforms.”“They promised budgetary responsibility but instead the government debt is growing. They promised to fight graft but corruption has gripped their parties and the entire society,” he told the crowd.The government — comprised of Necas’s right-wing Civic Democrats and the rightist TOP 09 and centrist Public Affairs parties — has vowed to cut the public deficit under 3.0 per cent of GDP in 2013 from 3.5 per cent expected this year.“As the prime minister... I feel responsible for keeping our country out of the debt trap,” Necas said on Saturday as protesters waved banners saying “down with the government,” “no to corruption,” or “an end to thieves and liars.”But Necas’s plans might vanish into thin air soon as the cabinet has lost its majority of 118 in the 200-seat parliament to find itself scrambling for 101 votes following the split-up of Public Affairs earlier this week.Necas gave the Public Affairs faction still backing his cabinet until Monday to secure the votes, and warned of early elections possibly in June.Recent surveys showed the leftist opposition Social Democrats would dominate an early vote ahead of the Communist Party, while Necas’s Civic Democrats would slump to the third place.Marching to Prague’s centre, Jana Sizlingova, a visibly angry pensioner from Prague, said she was fed up with the government that “doesn’t do anything for ordinary people.”“I’m upset with corruption, non-transparent procurement, the health system, the social system — simply, there’s nothing good about this government,” she said.