French President Chirac spoke to all French people on the main TV station

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After a hectic week of legal maneuverings, magistrates made fresh advances in their long-running investigations into illegal party financing in Paris. The probes have focused on alleged scams at Paris city hall in the 1980s and early 1990s during Chirac's tenure as mayor.

Chirac was elected president in 1995 and is widely expected to run again in 2002, with his likely challenger, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, from the Socialist Party. Magistrates believe that the RPR (the President’s party, which means Union for the Republic) demanded massive kickbacks from construction firms in return for lucrative contracts to build schools in the Paris region. Jospin's Socialists and a minor right-wing party are also suspected of having benefited from the scheme. However, the RPR is accused of having controlled the scam and taken the lions' share of the cash.

One of Chirac's former top aides in Paris, Michel Roussin, was briefly detained in custody earlier this month as magistrates upped the pressure. Both Chirac and his party have regularly denied involvement in any wrongdoing, but with newspapers printing a rash of fresh allegations in recent days, the pressure has grown on the president to speak out.

``This has become the biggest scandal of the Fifth Repbulic,'' the conservative Le Figaro newspaper said Wednesday.

Chirac himself has not been placed under formal investigation in the probes and under a controversial 1999 Constitutional Court ruling a president enjoys immunity from prosecution for all but treason charges. However, the influential newspaper Le Monde quoted unnamed sources within the president's entourage as saying that Chirac expected to be called as a witness to the case.

Francois Bayrou, the head of the small center-right UDF party, urged both Chirac and Jospin to say what they knew. ``(France) faces the most serious political and moral crisis in 50 years,'' he told Europe 1 radio Wednesday.

Chirac was mayor of Paris from 1977 until 1995, when he was elected French president at his third attempt. Since moving to the Elysee Palace, accusations of graft during his lengthy spell as city chief have grown steadily.

The schools scandal ties in with beyond-the-grave accusations -- made public in September -- from former RPR official Jean-Claude Mery. The charges, taped four years ago, three years before the official died, accused Chirac of setting up a huge covert funding system in Paris. Mery said the president was present when one payout of five million francs ($ N.T 22.5 millions) was handed over.

French President Jacques Chirac denied all knowledge on Thursday of illegal political party funding schemes alleged to have been orchestrated by his conservative RPR party. ``I didn't know for the simple reason that as president of the RPR, I never dealt with issues of financing'', Chirac told TF1 television.

Chirac said alleged improper contributions from businesses occurred at a time when political parties were stretched for campaign funds and the laws on party funding were unclear. It was only in 1995 that France passed a law banning companies from donating to political parties.

The President accused the French media of reporting events that date back 10 years as if they were current, and of scaring people into believing France faced a political and moral crisis.

He said he would also not be prepared to testify if called as a witness, despite what he said was a ``natural inclination to accept'' in order to set the record straight.

``The head of state takes his power from all the people of France. He is the guarantor of the continuity of the state and cannot be subjected to legislative power, judicial power or military power,'' Chirac said.

In the taped interview, Jean-Claude Mery, the self-described banker for the alleged kickback scheme, said Chirac had been present when a suitcase full of money was handed over to party officials. But Chirac, 68, said ``You will never find anyone who will say I am a money man, or a man who could compromise his honesty''.

``When I see that people claim that I went to the office of one of my colleagues to watch the delivery by someone, with whom I never had any personal relationship, of a suitcase full of money, well, I tell you, first I am stupefied and I am also profoundly hurt,'' Chirac said.

The French president joins the ranks of politicians from former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who have come under scrutiny for past party financing practices.

In Germany, Kohl had been reduced from a national hero to a man reviled by his own party over slush fund allegations. After leading the conservative Christian Democrats for a quarter century, Kohl admitted last year that he accepted about $1 million in off-the-books donations while in office. He refused to name the donors and denies selling favors.

In Russia, investigators had accused a Swiss construction firm of paying kickbacks to members of Yeltsin's close circle, including his family, for contracts to renovate the Kremlin and presidential properties. But the case was dropped this week, with investigators citing a lack of evidence.

Spain's Socialist Party also paid for the sins of the past when it was voted out of office in 1996, after 14 years in power, largely because of corruption scandals.