One year later, Emmanuelli was convicted for the illicit financing of the PS when he was its treasurer.

Work with international partners to counter illicit financing, including money laundering and terrorist financing.

In his time, he said in a recent interview, there was "not a single party that did not present false accounts to Parliament every year" to cover up illicit financing.

Mr. Carey has denied having known anything about the illicit financing, and Ms. Quindel said yesterday that she had not found evidence of any such knowledge.

Mr. Schauble, 57, represented the old school, one now tainted by its association with the system of illicit financing put in place by Mr. Kohl.

Its managing director, Mario Artali, was jailed for a time, and then freed this month to face questioning about the illicit financing of political parties that forms a main strand of the scandal.

As with the Palermo charges, Mr. Andreotti dismissed the accusation today that he was involved in the illicit financing of political parties.

Both men are being investigated in connection with the illicit financing of politicians and their parties that has been at the heart of a scandal unfolding over the last 14 months.

Mr. Craxi, the former Socialist leader, faces several separate inquiries into illicit financing.

One was to expose to an alarmed public all the facts of the arms-for-hostages dealings with Iran and the illicit financing of the Nicaraguan rebel forces.