Himalayan `rescue' for the lady mayoress

Mary Dejevsky on why the French embarked on a desperate search to avert a scandal

The lady mayoress of Paris, Xaviere Tiberi, is a formidable woman with luxuriant auburn hair, a fine set of front teeth and considerable chutzpah. Last week she provided the French with the best laugh they have had for a very long time.

The satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine revealed that the French government had sent a helicopter on a three-hour search of the Himalayan foothills at a cost to the French taxpayer of pounds 1,800, all to save the mayoress. Not that she was dangling over an abyss, except in a metaphorical sense. The helicopter was looking for a holidaying judge - the one man in France (in the world, indeed) who could save the lady from ignominy.

On 30 October, it appears, the police learnt that a local prosecuting judge was about to order an investigation into the business affairs of Mme Tiberi. Given the lady's position, or rather that of her husband, Jean - mayor of Paris, close associate of President Jacques Chirac and pillar of the ruling Gaullist party - they felt it advisable to inform the authorities. They told the interior and justice ministers, and probably also the Prime Minister, Alain Juppe.

To prevent the investigation into Mme Tiberi, however, they had to find the prosecuting judge's superior, Laurent Davenas. Only he could countermand the inquiry. But Mr Davenas, it emerged, had set off for the Himalayas on holiday. The word went out to find him, wherever he might be.

By then, the deputy had officially opened the investigation into Mme Tiberi, her husband was alleging a plot to get him and much scrabbling was going on behind the political scenes to devise a way of limiting the damage.

What is Mme Tiberi alleged to have done, and why was it so important that the investigation be prevented? The answer is to be found with another prosecuting judge, Eric Halphen, who demanded a search of the Tiberis' flat in connection with his investigation into corruption in the building industry. The Paris police refused to co-operate - they denied political pressure but have since been reprimanded - so the judge went by himself.

Among the material he took away were two documents. The first was an invoice for a report Mme Tiberi had written on local economic co-operation with Francophone countries, commissioned by a neighbouring mayor who also happened to be a family friend.

According to the Canard, the report is a 37-page document "of rare banality", but the bill was for 200,000 francs (pounds 23,600). Enter Mr Davenas, the prosecuting judge for the area which commissioned the report, who is now investigating the legality of the payment.

But it was Judge Halphen's second find which explained why the French authorities are willing to go to such lengths to spare Mme Tiberi any embarrassment. He also discovered a diary note by the mayoress that referred in unflattering terms to "J" and "C" - leaving no doubt that these were the Prime Minister, Mr Juppe, and President Jacques Chirac, who for 20 years was mayor of Paris.

The entanglement of the two most senior politicians in France goes back to the disclosure, more than a year ago, that many council and government officials, including the Prime Minister, lived at low rents in luxurious flats that were owned and maintained by the Paris municipality. Mr Juppe - one of whose previous jobs had been Paris city treasurer - had managed to lodge not only himself but his adult son, daughter and ex-wife in separate flats.

When Mr Juppe extricated himself by agreeing to move, the spotlight switched to the Tiberis, whose two adult children had been similarly housed.

Hard on the heels of that scandal came two further allegations about the Tiberi family. One was that the son, Dominique, had been paid a salary of about pounds 30,000 a year by Air France, even after he left the state-owned company's employment to become a ministerial adviser. The money is said to have been repaid recently to Air France, not by Mr Tiberi, but by the Prime Minister's office. Most of this has either been admitted or at least not denied. These scandals rumble on in the background, but it is the invoice found by Mr Halphen that has set off the investigation against the mayoress. The pressure is now on, and Mme Tiberi is said to have threatened, if she is indicted, to tell what really went on during Mr Chirac's two decades at the Paris town hall.

That is why the helicopter was sent to scour the Himalayas. It was not the fate of Mme Tiberi that was at stake so much as the stability of the state - and the danger has not been averted.