The governor of the Banque de France, Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, the possible future President of the European Central Bank, went on trial in Paris yesterday with eight other for disseminating false accounts.
Mr Trichet hopes the former directors of the Crédit Lyonnais and the accountants from Ernst & Young and Coopers & Lybrand who certified its records, not he, will be held responsible for the biggest banking scandal in French history. By some estimates, the formerly State-owned bank's near collapse a decade ago has cost French taxpayers €28.8 billion.
Mr Trichet will be questioned about what he did and did not know when he was director of the French treasury in the early 1990s. The nine defendants are a "Who's Who" of French finance. The only one to whom Mr Trichet spoke yesterday was the patrician former governor of the Banque de France, Mr Jacques de Larosière, who earlier headed the IMF.
Mr Jean-Yves Haberer, who as chairman of Crédit Lyonnais between 1988 and 1993 precipitated its downfall, Mr Trichet's former deputy at the treasury, two former directors general of the Crédit Lyonnais and three accountants, one of them British, are also on trial. If cleared, Mr Trichet will succeed Mr Wim Duisenberg at the European Central Bank. But if he is sentenced to a fine of any sort or a suspended sentence, his cherished ambition - the subject of a hard-won compromise at the 1997 Amsterdam summit - could be destroyed. The verdict should be handed down in March or April, but Mr Duisenberg has said he'd be willing to stay on after his 68th birthday in July to enable Mr Trichet to sort out his legal problems.
Crédit Lyonnais has been refloated three times in the past decade, and was finally privatised and taken over by the Crédit Agricole last month.
In the late 1980s, Mr Haberer decided that his bank should become "the biggest in the world". He embarked on an aggressive series of acquisitions, investing heavily in property, buying the US insurance company Executive Life as well as the MGM motion picture studio.
As the director of the French treasury, Mr Trichet was alarmed by the strategy and repeatedly warned the then finance minister, Mr Pierre Bérégovoy, against allowing the Crédit Lyonnais to invest in State-owned industries. Mr Bérégovoy, who later became prime minister and would have been a crucial witness in the case, committed suicide.
Last May, France's outgoing chief prosecutor, Mr Jean-Pierre Dinthillac, recommended that Mr Trichet be cleared. President Jacques Chirac has defended Mr Trichet's candidacy for the European Central Bank from the outset, and is eager to see him acquitted.
But the new prosecutor, Mr Yves Bot, said evidence uncovered in a parallel case meant a trial should go ahead.
In the opening session, judges turned down a request by a civil plaintiff for a postponement. That was a relief for Mr Trichet, who is is counting the months until the ECB vacancy. But Mr Bot implied that losses hidden at the Crédit Lyonnais may have been even greater than believed until now.
