Jackanapes caught in the cookie jar
(Via Pave France) Jon Henley reports for the Guardian that Paris judge holds Chiracs to account for £1.4m grocery bill:

A Paris investigating magistrate has overruled the recommendation of a senior public prosecutor and set up a formal inquiry into the £1.4m grocery bill claimed by Jacques Chirac and his wife during eight of the 18 years that the president spent as mayor of the French capital.

So he's a big eater, right? Well, it's a tad more than that:

Because most of the files from the early years of the Chirac tenure were shredded before municipal elections in 2000, the report covers only the years 1987-1995. But the evidence looks strong: during those eight years alone, the Chiracs claimed for, and were reimbursed, £1.45m for their personal food bills.

Some £950,000 of the bills, which are entirely separate from the mayor's annual £1m entertainment budget, were paid in cash apparently taken from the proceeds of the town hall's staff bar. The money was reimbursed in exchange for receipts that "in many instances give rise to suspicions of substantial fraud", the report says.

One £1,500 bill for foie gras and truffles had plainly been tampered with. "The initial sum appears to have been £500, with the figure 1 added at a later date," the auditors said. Another bill, for £375 in 1994, was reimbursed "four times that year, and then once the following year, on the basis of carbon copies of different colours and a modified date".

The corners of many receipts had been cut off to remove the date, the report adds, while receipts for purchases worth £4,000 from the luxury Paris delicatessen Fauchon "appear purely and simply to be fakes".

He's not even a good fraud.

Originally posted at 12:15 PM. Reposted to trick Blogger.