A Hunt For Big Game
Paris investigators of an alleged political money scam target a close Chirac loyalist
By JAMES WALSH

Throughout Bill Clinton's latest ordeal, the French have been among the most outspoken overseas scorners of Washington's inquisition. What sort of legal system was it, many of them have wondered, that could contrive to compromise a head of state in such a way? Last week that question no longer seemed so remote. A French investigating magistrate notified Alain Juppe, President Jacques Chirac's former Prime Minister, that he was the subject of an inquiry into what appeared to be the provision of fake civil service jobs for party workers at a time when Juppe had overseen finances for the city of Paris. Since Chirac during that period had been mayor of the capital, just a rung up from his top lieutenant, the possibility suddenly loomed that the President himself could eventually be engulfed by a Washington-style probe.

Featherbedding controversies are hardly novel in French politics, especially since the well-developed art of padding payrolls was not strictly unlawful until fairly recently. Earlier this year, in fact, some officials who had served in the Socialist administration of Francois Mitterrand, the late former President, explained how their meager Elysee Palace incomes had been supplemented by salaries from no-show jobs in state-owned companies--an expedient they dismissed as "standard practice." The public might have shrugged off Juppe's contretemps as a nine-days' wonder as well, except for one new twist: the high risk of implicating a sitting head of state. Expert opinion last week was divided as to whether the Fifth Republic constitution grants the President immunity to judicial inquiries into any misdeeds he may have performed before entering office. In any event, though, a scandal knocking at the door of the Elysee threatens to shatter whatever unity that French conservatives have left.

To the extent that the case focuses on money, not sexual hanky-panky, it is not truly Clintonesque in odor; for that, at least, France had cause to be thankful. Yet the mere willingness of investigating judges to beard the political elite reflects a new-found boldness among prosecutors not unlike America's post-Watergate ethic of holding high officials strictly to account. Elsewhere in Western Europe as well, free-ranging legal investigations are upsetting the comfortable status quo--in Italy's case, toppling the entire postwar political establishment.

What the Paris magistrate is examining is nowhere near so seismic, but the probe's sheer peskiness is as unusual as its troublemaking potential. Trying to put a brave face on the episode, one Elysee insider admits, "This would have been unimaginable even under Mitterrand. The entire thing would have been quashed before anyone would have heard about it. We're really witnessing a mutation in both society and political circles as to how cheating can and cannot be tolerated." In practically the same breath, however, the aide bristles that such investigations amount to attacks on the state, "trying to establish a rule of fear dominated by legal ayatullahs."

The crux of the case is testimony by a former city official that up to 200 spear-carriers for Chirac's party, Rally for the Republic, or RPR, gained nominal city jobs paid for out of the public purse or by friendly companies. Juppe, finance director of Paris from 1988 to 1993 and one of Chirac's staunchest loyalists, insisted that his boss did not get involved in staffing decisions, although investigators reportedly have some hiring memos bearing notes in what looks like Chirac's hand. Juppe's own defense seems to consist of two stages: one, that he never knowingly broke the law; two, if any improprieties did occur, they happened when the rules against featherbedding were still unclear.

Can an inquiry touch the President? Says Guy Carcasonne, a political observer and expert on French law: "The constitution protects the presidency and the person of the President as he fulfills the duties of that office. Whether it provides immunity for acts committed outside his elected office, or those committed prior to being elected, is another question." An Elysee official acknowledges that, even short of Chirac's becoming a target of investigation, "that still leaves open the possibility of him being called in by the judge as a witness, which is still trouble."