If the prosecutors appeal Friday’s order, it could take months for judges to determine whether he should face trial on charges of diverting public money, which carry a maximum 10-year jail sentence and a $210,000 fine. One of Mr. Chirac’s most prominent aides during his presidency, former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, is in court defending himself against separate charges of planning a smear campaign in 2003 and 2004 to thwart the ambitions of Nicolas Sarkozy, a political rival who is now the president.

Image Then-President Jacques Chirac of France at the Élysée Palace in 2007. Credit... Horacio Villalobos/European Pressphoto Agency

The charges against Mr. Chirac and nine other people relate to his years as mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995. He is accused of awarding contracts for fictitious positions as city advisers in return for political favors. Public suspicion about his past followed him through his years as president.

Mr. Chirac was elected president in 1995 and remained in office until 2007. His position as president gave him constitutional immunity from prosecution, which fell away when he left office. Preliminary embezzlement charges were filed soon afterward, but he denied them vigorously in a letter to the newspaper Le Monde in November 2007.

“Never were the resources of the city of Paris used for ambitions other than to benefit Parisians,” the letter said. “Never was there personal enrichment. Never was there a ‘system.’ ” Several aides to Mr. Chirac faced trial on corruption charges while the president was still in office, including former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, convicted in 2004 of party finance irregularities.

More recently, a Paris court last Tuesday ordered a three-year prison term for a former interior minister, Charles Pasqua, and a $562,000 fine for Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of former President François Mitterrand, for their involvement in illegal arms trafficking to Angola in the 1990s.