Former French minister insists he was framed

By Martin Arnold 
October 18, 2005
Financial Times
Original Source:
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/15873838-3f73-11da-932f-00000e2511c8.html

Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister, said yesterday that Total, the French oil group, was behind the front company that allegedly used his name and profited from irregularities in the United Nations' oil-for-food programme for Iraq.
Someone used my name, Mr Pasqua told a press conference in Paris yesterday. He presented journalists with a 60-page memorandum he had sent to the US Senate denying the allegations made by the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations in a report in May.
Mr Pasqua's decision to go public with his defence against the allegations comes amid growing alarm in Parisian diplomatic and political circles about the damage being done to France's image by an independent judicial inquiry, which has already charged a handful of senior French officials. Jean-Bernard Mérimée, France's former UN
 ambassador, was last week released on bail of ¬ 150,000 ($181,000, £102,000) after being charged with corruption and bribery of foreign officials after allegations that he received oil vouchers from Saddam Hussein's regime.
Mr Pasqua's former diplomatic ad
viser, Bernard Guillet, was taken into custody in April on similar charges. Mr Mérimée, Mr Guillet and Mr Pasqua were among 11 French businessmen, diplomats and politicians, named in documents retrieved from Iraq's Oil Ministry among more than 200 recipients of oil allocations.
He said his name had been used by people in France, in Iraq, or in both countries, to peddle influence and profit from the illegal trading in allocations of Iraqi oil.
I never was the beneficiary of an allocation from Iraq; I never traded Iraqi oil, directly or indirectly; I authorised no one to do so on my behalf. Finally, I never accepted, received or enjoyed any profit or remuneration from Iraqi crude oil trades, he said.
He denied having any links with Genmar, a Swiss-listed company, which was listed in documents retrieved from the Iraqi Oil Ministry as having received oil allocations on Mr Pasqua's behalf in 1999 and 2000.
I have never met any directors of this company. But there is someone who used my name to suggest I chose Genmar as the company to receive these attributions of Iraqi oil, he said. Who used my name? If we go back up the financial flows we will see who benefited from the use of my name.
Mr Pasqua claimed Genmar was set up by Total, the biggest member of Paris' CAC-40 index of blue chip companies, which last year changed its name from TotalFinaElf.
Unquestionably, the oil giant TotalFinaElf, its executives, directors, subsidiaries, affiliates, employees, directly or indirectly, played an essential role in the oil-for-food programme and more particularly in the fraudulent operations attributed to Charles Pasqua, he said in the memo.
Mr Pasqua suggested France was suffering because it had failed to launch a parliamentary inquiry of its own into the oil-for-food affair, leaving the field open to US-based inquiries.
Total said yesterday it had always respected the United Nations' embargo against Iraq.