{"id":18253,"date":"2021-03-04T08:13:33","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T13:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=18253"},"modified":"2021-03-04T08:13:33","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T13:13:33","slug":"karachi-affair-french-ex-pm-edouard-balladur-acquitted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2021\/03\/04\/karachi-affair-french-ex-pm-edouard-balladur-acquitted\/","title":{"rendered":"Karachi affair: French ex-PM \u00c9douard Balladur acquitted"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p><b class=\"ssrcss-14iz86j-BoldText e5tfeyi0\">France&#8217;s former PM \u00c9douard Balladur has been acquitted in a corruption trial over a submarine deal with Pakistan in the mid-1990s.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>Mr Balladur, 91, had faced charges of using commissions from the deal to fund a failed presidential bid in 1995.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>Former defence minister Fran\u00e7ois L\u00e9otard was given a two-year suspended sentence and fined \u20ac100,000 ($120,000) for complicity in misusing assets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>Six men were jailed over the case last year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"unordered-list-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-1pzprxn-BulletListContainer e5tfeyi3\">\n<ul role=\"list\">\n<li><a class=\"ssrcss-hiczm3-InlineLink e1no5rhv0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-53054474\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Six men sentenced over &#8216;Karachi affair&#8217; arms deal<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>Investigations into the so-called Karachi affair began after 11 French engineers were killed in a bombing in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi in 2002.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>Pakistani authorities blamed Islamist militants, but there were suspicions that the attack was an act of revenge after then-French President Jacques Chirac ordered the payments of secret arms deal commissions to stop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>Both Mr Balladur and former minister L\u00e9otard, who were charged in 2017, had denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>Last June, three former French government officials and three others were sentenced to between two and five years in jail over their involvement in the Karachi affair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p>They included Mr Balladur&#8217;s former campaign manager, a former adviser to L\u00e9otard and a former aide to France&#8217;s ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was then the minister in charge of sales and commissions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ssrcss-uf6wea-RichTextComponentWrapper e1xue1i83\" data-component=\"text-block\">\n<div class=\"ssrcss-3z08n3-RichTextContainer e5tfeyi2\">\n<p><a class=\"ssrcss-hiczm3-InlineLink e1no5rhv0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-56237818\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sarkozy, who was sentenced to prison in a separate corruption case earlier this week,<\/a>\u00a0has also faced legal scrutiny over the Karachi affair. He has denied any connection to the deal.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-56024233\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\">France&#8217;s former PM \u00c9douard Balladur has been acquitted in a corruption trial over a submarine deal with Pakistan in the mid-1990s. Mr Balladur, 91, had faced charges of using commissions from the deal to fund <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2021\/03\/04\/karachi-affair-french-ex-pm-edouard-balladur-acquitted\/\" title=\"Karachi affair: French ex-PM \u00c9douard Balladur acquitted\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,6],"tags":[948,7610,2913,1071],"class_list":{"0":"post-18253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-world","10":"tag-corruption","11":"tag-edouard-balladur","12":"tag-france","13":"tag-pakistan","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18253"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18255,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253\/revisions\/18255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}