Talk:Jacques Barrot

Untitled
There's quite a bit of (voluntary) confusion here. Jacques Chirac, as president of France, cannot grant amnesty; he can only grant pardon. The so-called "presidential amnesties" are actually laws voted by the Parliament of France, traditionally after each presidential election, cancelling the conviction of various petty crimes. They have been increasingly criticized, but some people argue that they may be useful in lowering prison overpopulation.

Such laws have broad categories of offenses that are amnistied (ex: minor traffic offenses) as well as offenses for which the president can nominate individuals that are to be amnistied. I do not know whether this was the case for Barrot. David.Monniaux 22:57, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I also removed the British MEP's claims to have been "threatened with arrest". I suspect that this is exaggerated melodramatics for some legal threats. I also removed the claims that under French law it is illegal to mention the sentencing of an amnistied person: just check with an attorney, it is perfectly legal to mention that a person has been sentenced, then amnistied.

It therefore seems to me highly possible that this is just the British MEP trying to overdo the athmosphere of corruption that he claims to reveal, which probably suits his political objectives. Yet, here, on Wikipedia, we should not copy political propaganda as if it were the truth. :-) David.Monniaux 23:22, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Source for fraud conviction
On November 4, User:Boson removed the content from this page about Barrot's fraud conviction - quite rightly, because it is controversial material about a living person and was unsourced. This source, a BBC News profile, seems reliable enough, and so should be used if anyone wants to add the material back into the article: Terraxos (talk) 02:30, 27 November 2007 (UTC)