PARIS, April 6: Former French interior minister Charles Pasqua said on Thursday he had been placed under investigation for influence peddling as part of a probe into the UN scandal-tainted oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

Mr Pasqua, 78, a senator with the ruling UMP party who served as interior minister in the 1980s and 1990s, said in a statement that he had been placed under investigation — the first step to indictment — on Wednesday.

The senator, who has repeatedly denied benefiting from corruption of the UN programme, said he had ‘never touched a single oil voucher’, adding that his lawyers would contest the accusations.

According to a source close to the investigation, he is suspected of accepting around 10 million barrels’ worth of oil as kickbacks from the government of Saddam Hussein in breach of the UN program in 1999.

A dozen people — including several former French diplomats and a former aide to Mr Pasqua, Bernard Guillet — are under judicial investigation in France over their alleged role in the 64-billion-dollar UN scheme.

The oil-for-food programme, which ran from 1996 to 2003, allowed Baghdad, which was under international sanctions, to sell limited quantities of oil so that it could buy food and medicines for the Iraqi people.

The programme is the centre of a vast international scandal, centring on the use of oil vouchers granted by Baghdad to foreign personalities deemed to be well-disposed to the government.

A US Senate panel last year accused him of taking massive oil allocations under the scheme, basing its report on Iraqi oil ministry documents and the testimony of senior officials in Saddam’s administration.

The panel forwarded its findings last year to French magistrate Philippe Courroye, who placed Mr Pasqua under investigation following a 90-minute interview on Wednesday.

Two top French diplomats, including a former representative on the UN Security Council, were put under investigation last year on suspicion of having illegally received oil vouchers from Baghdad.—AFP