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A DECISION by an investigating judge to send Jacques Chirac, a former president, to stand trial in a court is without precedent in modern French history. Mr Chirac is accused of “misappropriation of public funds” during his time as mayor of Paris. The decision comes in a month in which the entrails of France's one-time ruling elite have been spilling out. A former interior minister, Charles Pasqua, was this week sentenced to a year in prison (and a suspended sentence of two years) for involvement in arms trafficking to Angola. A former prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, has also been tried in connection with a smear campaign and is awaiting a verdict.

The case against Mr Chirac concerns 21 “fake jobs” that were allegedly created for friends at the Paris town hall, where he held office between 1977 and 1995. As long as he was president, from 1995 to 2007, Mr Chirac was immune from prosecution, and his lawyer has argued that he remains so for acts carried out during his time in office. This has frustrated various investigating judges over the years, who have compiled numerous dossiers concerning Mr Chirac, all of which have been dropped, in some cases because the statute of limitations had expired.

Many observers expected the same to happen with the last remaining case, especially after the public prosecutor, himself appointed by Mr Chirac, judged that there was not enough evidence to take it to court. Yet in a bold move Xavière Simeoni, the investigating judge leading the case against the ex-president, decided otherwise. It remains uncertain whether the case will reach court. The prosecutor may appeal against the decision, which would delay any proceedings. Mr Chirac's office said that he was “serene” about the matter, and confident that he could demonstrate that the jobs were real. But if found guilty Mr Chirac could face ten years in prison. It is the first time under France's fifth republic that a former head of state has been ordered to stand trial.

The decision comes at the end of a highly charged month which has cast light on all manner of murky dealings at the heart of the French elite, many of them during Mr Chirac's presidency. The judgment this week in the arms-trafficking case to Angola concerned the supply, in contravention of a United Nations arms embargo, of landmines, shells, tanks, helicopters and naval vessels to the Angolan government between 1993 and 1998, during its civil war. Mr Pasqua, who has appealed against his conviction, was Mr Chirac's interior minister. Among the dozens of other defendants, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the Socialist former president and his father's Africa adviser at the time, was fined for embezzlement and given a two-year suspended prison sentence. Pierre Falcone, a French arms dealer, and Arkady Gaydamak, an Israeli-Russian businessman, were each sentenced to six years imprisonment.

The French political class has also been gripped this month by a trial over the “Clearstream” smear-campaign. Mr de Villepin, who was prime minister under Mr Chirac, has been accused of helping to spread a fake list of names linking Nicolas Sarkozy, then a fellow government minister and fierce rival, and other politicians to false bank accounts supposedly containing kickbacks from arms deals. Prosecutors have asked for an 18-month suspended sentence against Mr de Villepin for complicity in slander, and jail terms for two others. Mr de Villepin has denied all the charges. The verdict is due in January.

The consequences of all this for President Sarkozy are likely to be limited. He served in government under Mr Chirac, and is from the same political family, but was also his fierce rival and campaigned for office against Mr Chirac's record. Mr Sarkozy is unconnected to the Angola trial and he is a civil plaintiff in the Clearstream case. Still, the conviction of Mr Pasqua does raise questions about the political milieu in which he made his name. Mr Pasqua was head of the Hauts-de-Seine council, the department that includes the posh suburb of Neuilly, where Mr Sarkozy was first elected mayor, and became his political godfather. The “Angolagate” trial has strained relations between France and the oil-rich former Portuguese colony. In May last year Mr Sarkozy made a one-day trip there to try to smooth relations.

In many ways, this series of trials gives France a dismal image. A class of politicians seems to have been up to no good for a long period of time, and to have assumed that the timorous French justice system would never act. This month's events, however, have suggested exactly the opposite: that forthright investigating judges can still hold politicians to account.