Mitterrand 'ordered phone taps to keep love child secret'

The Paris criminal court heard how the former president oversaw a telephone-tapping operation that eavesdropped on more than 3,000 conversations between politicians, journalists and lawyers between 1983 and 1986.

Prosecutors claimed that Mr Mitterrand, who died in January 1996 after 14 years in power, used an anti-terrorist unit he had set up at the Elyse Palace to order illegal phone taps to spy on a bewildering array of public figures.

Many of the reports which will be presented as evidence at the trial bear the notation "seen" in the president’s own hand.

The anti-terrorist unit at the centre of the scandal was created by Mr Mitterrand following an attack on the Rue des Rosiers, in the Jewish neighbourhood of Paris, in 1982. The unit’s official mission was to "make terrorism retreat everywhere it hides, to track it down to its very roots".

However, the unit is said to have spent most of its time eavesdropping on the president’s rivals as it tried to stifle whispers about his complicated domestic arrangements - in particular, the existence of his long-standing mistress, Anne Pingeot, and the couple’s illegitimate daughter, Mazarine, now 29.

After a nine-year investigation by the Paris magistrate Jean-Paul Valat, 12 people have been accused of violation of privacy. They include Christian Prouteau, the former head of the anti-terrorist unit, and a string of the former president’s closest aides. Among them are Gilles Menag, his principal private secretary; the Socialist MP Michel Delebarre, 58, who was the principal private secretary to the prime minister Pierre Mauroy between 1982 and 1984; and Louis Schweitzer, 62, the chairman of Renault who, at the time, was principal private secretary to Laurent Fabius, who succeeded Mr Mauroy as prime minister in 1984.

Among the principal victims of the alleged phone tapping were the investigative journalist Edwy Plenel, now editorial director of the centre-left daily Le Monde; the controversial lawyer Jacques Verges, popularly known as "the devil’s advocate"; and the author and former confidant of the president, Jean-Edern Hallier.

When Mr Hallier, who died in 1997, threatened to reveal the existence of the president’s illegitimate daughter in a book, Tonton and Mazarine - or the Lost Honour of Franois Mitterrand, he became the unit’s main target.

It is claimed that not only was his own phone bugged but those of his family, his publisher, his concierge and even his caf were also tapped.

Other alleged victims of the Elyse bugging scandal are more surprising. They include the actress and Chanel model Carole Bouquet, who, the unit’s records show, excited the president’s interest for several weeks in 1985.

The phone tapping caused a scandal when it first came to light in 1993 but did not derail Mr Mitterrand’s presidency.

According to Yves Bonnet, the boss of the DST - the French equivalent of M15 - between 1982 and 1985 and co-author of a book about the scandal, Mr Mitterrand not only knew about the bugging but was personally kept abreast of its day-to-day activities.

"The unit and, thus, the phone taps, that was his doing, his preserve," Mr Bonnet said. "The bugging ordered by the Elyse never served in the battle against terrorism."

He went on: "Christian Prouteau only reported to the head of state. In this respect, Franois Mitterrand will be the great absentee of the trial. At the end of the day, the phone tapping case would be nothing more than a comedy if a man hadn’t died."

Mr Bonnet was referring to a policeman, Captain Pierre-Yves Guzou, who was placed under formal investigation for his role in the scandal and who committed suicide in 1994.