Chirac pardons his fraudster friend By Henry Samuel in Paris (Filed: 27/05/2006)

Jacques Chirac was accused yesterday of acting like a "prince of a banana republic" after granting a presidential amnesty to his friend, the former athlete Guy Drut.

Mr Drut, a disgraced International Olympic Committee member and former sports minister, as well as a staunch Chirac ally and deputy of the ruling UMP party, was given a 15-month suspended jail sentence in October for pocketing a £2,000 monthly salary for a fictitious job at a construction firm from 1990 to 1993.

Investigators were not able to question Mr Chirac on his alleged role in the scandal due to presidential immunity.

Mr Drut was pardoned on Thursday under an amnesty law for "services to the nation", which was recently amended to include sportsmen. Opposition members allege that Mr Chirac changed the law specifically to help out his sporting cronies.

Mr Chirac is godfather to one of Mr Drut's daughters and reportedly convinced him to enter politics when he retired from athletics after winning Olympic gold in the 110-metre hurdles in 1976.

An Elysée spokesman yesterday rejected charges of cronyism and said that the amnesty would allow Mr Drut to resume his seat at the IOC, from which he had been suspended, "which is essential for France and the defence of its interests in the sporting world".

But the move was met with outrage even from within Mr Chirac's UMP party. "Is a man an honest citizen just because he won a gold medal 25 years ago? The courts have answered that question," said a Green party deputy, Noel Mamere. Mr Chirac, he said, had acted like a "prince of a banana republic".

Gilles Artigues, a deputy of UDF, the Government's centrist ally, said the amnesty revealed the lack of an "impartial state" in France.

Francois Hollande, the Socialist leader, yesterday called the custom a "privilege from another age" and vowed to scrap it.

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