Chirac allies in the dock as corruption trial begins

SENIOR allies of President Jacques Chirac - including four former ministers - were among nearly 50 people who appeared in court in Paris yesterday at the start of one of France's biggest-ever political corruption trials.

A total of 47 defendants - including politicians, party officials, and representatives of some of France's biggest building companies - are accused of fixing public works contracts in the Paris region in order to obtain illegal party funding.

One of several financial scandals to come to light from Mr Chirac's long tenure to 1995 as mayor of Paris, the affair centres on kickbacks worth over €70 million allegedly paid by the building firms in order to secure bids to renovate secondary schools around the capital. Under a secret arrangement that lasted from 1989 to 1997, companies funnelled back 2% of the money paid by the regional Ile-de-France council, with 1.2% going to Chirac's Rally for the Republic (RPR) and its ally the Republican Party (PR), and 0.8% going to the Socialists (PS), according to the prosecution.