PARIS: Former French prime minister Edouard Balladur was charged on Tuesday over alleged kickbacks in an arms deal suspected of having partly funded his failed 1995 presidential bid, a judicial source said.
The 88-year-old was charged with “complicity in misuse of corporate assets and concealment” over the sale of submarines to Pakistan in 1994 when he was a premier and hoping to become president, the source confirmed to AFP.
The so-called Karachi Affair came to light during an investigation into a 2002 bombing in the Pakistani city which targeted a bus transporting French engineers working on the submarine deal.
Fifteen people were killed, including 11 of the engineers.
The Al-Qaeda extremist network was initially suspected of the attack but the focus later shifted to the arms deal, with investigators probing whether the bombing was revenge for the non-payment of bribes secretly promised to Pakistani officials.
Balladur, a conservative, was charged after being questioned Monday by the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special tribunal that hears cases of ministerial misconduct, the source said.
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