Paris - Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin and four others went on trial Monday for their part in an alleged campaign to link President Nicolas Sarkozy to illegal kickbacks from an arms sale. The 55-year-old Villepin is charged with complicity in libel and could be sentenced to five years in prison, if found guilty.
As he arrived at the Palace of Justice in Paris, Villepin defended himself and took a swipe at his political rival.
"I am here because of the determination of one man, Nicolas Sarkozy," he told journalists. "I will leave here free and cleared in the name of the people."
Sarkozy had sworn to "hang on meathooks" the people who had smeared him.
In addition to Sarkozy, the plaintiffs in the case include International Monetary Fund (IMF) head and former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux and two of his predecessors, and former finance minister Alain Madelin.
Their names were among some 200 on a list of people who supposedly received kickbacks, via secret accounts at the Luxembourg-based clearing house Clearstream, from the 1991 sale of six French frigates to Taiwan.
A five-year investigation found that the list was a forgery and that Sarkozy, Strauss-Kahn and the other politicians did not possess foreign bank accounts into which the kickbacks had supposedly been funnelled.
Among the four other defendants are Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former vice president at European aerospace giant EADS, who is accused of leaking the false list to a judge in 2004, and computer expert Imad Lahoud, who has admitted concocting the list.
The trial is scheduled to last at least one month.
