Former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin arrives at court for the verdict in his trial in relation to the 'Clearstream' affair. Photograph: Boris Horvat/AFP/Getty Images
Nicolas Sarkozy was left disappointed and humiliated today after his loathed rival, the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, was cleared of all wrongdoing in an alleged smear campaign against the president.
In a dramatic triumph for the debonair, poetry-writing politician, who had never ceased to claim he was in court merely at the whim of a leader who detested him, De Villepin was cleared of all charges levied during the so-called Clearstream affair. Standing beneath the arches of the Palais de Justice before a scrum of journalists and applauding supporters, De Villepin walked free from the court with a smile on his permanently tanned face, declaring his innocence had been recognised after years of "rumour and suspicion".
"I salute the courage of the court, which has allowed justice and law to triumph over politics," he said, with a flourish of the hallmark rhetoric which earned him global renown as France's foreign minister in the runup to the Iraq war.
"I am proud to be the citizen of a country, France, where the spirit of independence remains alive," he said, adding: "I harbour no resentment, no grudge. I want to turn the page."
Sarkozy, the key plaintiff who had reportedly vowed to hang his rival "by a butcher's hook", issued a terse statement "noting the severity of certain findings" concerning de Villepin. He added that he would not be appealing – a needless point given it is the role of the public prosecutor, and not him, to do so.
After five years of investigation and a trial which heard 112 hours of evidence, De Villepin, 56, was cleared of any knowing involvement in an elaborate scam which had tried falsely to accuse Sarkozy and others of stashing covert kickbacks in secret accounts in the Luxembourg bank Clearstream.
Prosecutors had requested he face an 18-month suspended prison sentence as well as a fine of €45,000 (£39,000), but in the verdicts read out from a 326-page ruling it was two other men in the dock who shouldered responsibility.
Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former executive of defence aviation group EADS, was ordered to serve three years in prison – including 21 months suspended – and pay a €40,000 fine.
The court said he was the "brains" behind the scheme and the anonymous figure who in 2004 sent an investigative judge a copy of the forged listings. Gergorin, 63, said he would appeal.
Imad Lahoud, a former minor intelligence source who now teaches maths in a Parisian secondary school, was sentenced to 18 months in jail for forging the listings. Management consultant Florian Bourges was sentenced to four months in prison, while the journalist who broke the initial story based on the faked listings, Denis Robert, was cleared of all involvement.
For Sarkozy, who turned 55 today, the verdict is a huge blow that risks vindicating De Villepin's claims that the French president had brought the trial purely in order to take down a rival. "I thought you were coming to wish me a happy birthday," he joked when journalists spoke to him this morning.
For the newly exonerated former prime minister, the ruling clears the path for a political revival after two and a half years in the wilderness. It is the worst-kept secret in Paris that the urbane writer of Napoleon history texts and protégé of Jacques Chirac has his eye on the 2012 presidential elections.
The two men's vicious battle to become the leader of the post-Chirac French right split the UMP down the middle and, though only a handful of MPs in his party now openly consider themselves part of the De Villepin clan, observers say the man who calls Sarkozy "the dwarf" could yet win round those disillusioned with the president's policies.
Today, in his statement outside the court, De Villepin said he wanted to "turn to the future to serve the French people".
It will now be up to his recently created Gaullist political organisation, Club Villepin, to get behind him in a bid to enable him to do so. Supporters want to see the group, run by Brigitte Girardin, a former minister from the Chirac era, be transformed into a political party which could then provide an official platform for Villepin to present himself as an "alternative" rightwing challenger to Sarkozy.
The Elysée has been quick to pour scorn on such an idea, and many observers argue that despite the boost given to him by today's verdict, de Villepin has too much to do – both in terms of reputation and resources – to make it a real possibility.
"Villepin has no party, no money, practically no MPs. No one will follow him," Franck Louvrier, Sarkozy's media adviser, told Le Monde.
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