Few French people seemed to want to confront the late president’s murky past as the country paid tribute to him in Paris today

Jacques Chirac was a rogue who accepted briefcases of money from Saddam Hussein, the former head of MI6 has claimed.

Sir Richard Dearlove said that when he was in charge of MI6 “there were indications that Chirac had received funding from Hussein”. He said that Hussein had given “cash in a briefcase” for Chirac’s successful French presidential campaigns in 1995 and 2002.

“He was a rogue,” Sir Richard told the Cliveden Literary Festival about the former French president who died last week. “Or, let’s say, he had roguish characteristics.”

Sir Richard, who was C at MI6 from 1999 to 2004, said that the intelligence had been received around the time Britain and the United States were trying to build support at the UN for action