France's ex-premier Dominique de Villepin was acquitted Thursday of charges of plotting to smear Nicolas Sarkozy and sabotage his presidential bid in a verdict seen as bolstering his chance at a comeback.

The court ruled there were no grounds to convict the 56-year-old politician of complicity to slander Sarkozy in 2004, when the two men were angling to succeed president Jacques Chirac.
 

The acquittal was an outright victory for Villepin in the five year legal saga and was seen as bolstering his stature as he sets his sights on the 2012 presidential vote.
 

Villepin smiled and shook hands with supporters as he walked free out of the Paris courtroom, accompanied by his family, three months after the politically explosive trial.
 

"After many years of ordeal, my innocence has been recognised," Villepin said. "I was hurt by the image of politics that was portrayed, of the commitment that I have made over the past thirty years."
 

"I am now looking to the future to serve the French people and contribute in a spirit of unity to the recovery of France," he said.
 

The verdict coincidentally came on Sarkozy's 55th birthday and while the president was chairing a meeting at the Elysee Palace to agree on measures to curb France's ballooning deficit.

Document fabricated
The complex case centred on a list - later proved to have been fabricated - of account holders at the Clearstream financial clearing house who allegedly took bribes from the sale of French warships to Taiwan.

Sarkozy's name was on the list and the French leader alleged the scandal was fabricated to tarnish him ahead of his party's nomination for the 2007 presidential vote, which he won.
 

"It was not proven that Dominique de Villepin knew that the lists were fake," ruled presiding judge Dominique Pauthe.
 

Villepin was cleared on all four counts in the case dubbed France's trial of the decade: complicity to slander, to use forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust.
 

Three other defendants were convicted: ex-aerospace executive Jean-Louis Gergorin who admitted to leaking the fake list to investigators, Imad Lahoud who confessed to adding Sarkozy's name to the list and accountant Florian Bourges, who obtained data on account holders that were later falsified.
 

Journalist Denis Robert, who introduced Bourges to Lahoud, was acquitted.
 

The sensational trial opened in September in the courtroom where Marie Antoinette was sentenced to the guillotine in 1793, with Villepin accusing Sarkozy of pursuing a personal vendetta against him.
 

Dubbed the Clearstream affair, the scandal made frontpage news across France in 2005 and Sarkozy, then Chirac's ambitious finance minister, reportedly swore he would hang those responsible on a "butcher's hook".
 

Sarkozy scored a point when the court on Thursday rejected Villepin’s request that the president be stripped of his status as a civil plaintiff in the case.

Jail sentence sought
Prosecutors had argued during the month long trial that while Villepin did not deliberately take part in a plot to smear Sarkozy, he did nothing to stop the scandal from spinning out of control as he hoped to gain political capital.
 

They had sought a suspended jail sentence of 18 months and a 45,000 euro fine for Villepin.
 

The silver haired politician, best known for opposing the US invasion of Iraq at the United Nations, had defended himself, arguing during the trial that he never knew the list was false and never sought to use it against Sarkozy.
 

Villepin is banking that the acquittal will help propel his political career at a time when Sarkozy is struggling with poor approval ratings.
 

In the week before the verdict, he made a high profile visit to a Paris suburb, declaring that he offered a "political alternative" to Sarkozy and was ready to "serve France and the French."
 

Source: AFP