PARIS, May 30 (Xinhua) -- Former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur was formally probed by the commission of inquiry at the French Court of Justice (CJR) for a scandal over the financing of his 1995 presidential campaign, a local newspaper, due out on Wednesday, reported.
According to the weekly newspaper Le Canard Enchaine in its edition to be published on Wednesday, the 88-year-old former prime minister is suspected to have received kickbacks on arms contracts.
Questioned Monday by the CJR commission of inquiry, he was put under formal investigation for "complicity in the misuse and handling of assets," Le Canard Enchaine revealed.
In a statement, Balladur announced that he has "asked his lawyers to contest this decision before the Court of Appeals."
"The decision of the commission of inquiry drew no conclusions from the approval of the campaign account by the Constitutional Council in October 1995, nor from the datedness of the facts, which were as old as 23 years," said the former prime minister.
Judges have been tracking a supposed hidden financing scheme, from which Balladur was alleged to have benefited, during an investigation into a 2002 terrorist attack in Karachi, Pakistan, which killed 15 people including 11 French workers from the Naval Construction Office.
A candidate of the presidency in 1995, Balladur's signature was found on an arms sale contract with Pakistan in 1994.
In June 2014, the judges sentenced several people involved in the scandal to prison, including Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, special counselor of the Ministry of Defense, Nicolas Bazire, who was a director of Balladur's cabinet, Dominique Castellan, former CEO of the Naval Construction Office, and the inflammatory Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine.
The French Court of Justice, with sole jurisdiction over ministries for crimes committed in the exercise of their office, was put in charge of investigating the alleged role played by Balladur and his former Defense Minister Francois Leotard.
It was charged with the responsibility to see if Balladur's campaign was financed by illegal kickbacks on submarine contracts sold to Pakistan and frigates sold to Saudi Arabia, and if the halt on payment for the commissions, ordered by then President Jacques Chirac, is at the origin of the terrorist attack in Karachi.
