Charles Pasqua was a French businessman and Gaullist politician. He was Interior Minister from 1986 to 1988, under Jacques Chirac's cohabitation government, and also from 1993 to 1995, under the government of Edouard Balladur.
From 1952 to 1971 he worked for Ricard, a producer of alcoholic beverages, starting as a salesman. In 1971, Pasqua founded Euralim, also known as Europe-Alimentation, an importer of Americano, a cocktail made by the Italian company Gancia.
Politics
In 1947, he helped create the section of the Gaullist PartyRPF movement for the Alpes-Maritimes. With Jacques Foccart and Achille Peretti, he was the co-founder of the Service d'Action Civique in 1959 to counter the terrorist actions of the OAS during the Algerian War of Independence. The SAC would be charged with the underground actions of the Gaullist movement and participated in the organization of the 30 May 1968 Gaullist counter-demonstration. From 1968 to 1973, he was deputy to the French National Assembly for the Hauts-de-Seinedépartement for the UDR party, of which he was a leading member from 1974 to 1976. He helped Jacques Chirac to take the lead of the party and participated in its transformation into the Rally for the Republic. Counsellor of Jacques Chirac alongside Marie-France Garaud, he was in charge of the organisation of Chirac's campaign for the 1981 presidential election, won by the candidate of the Socialist Party, François Mitterrand. As such, he is considered to be Chirac's mentor in politics. From 1981 to 1986 he was senator for the Hauts-de-Seine, then president of the RPR group in the Senate. From 1986 to 1988 he was Interior Minister. In 1992, he called a vote against the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. He became Interior Minister again from 1993 to 1995, and supported the candidacy of Edouard Balladur at the 1995 presidential election. He is mostly remembered for having pushed a series of anti-immigration laws, and for his declaration "we will terrorize the terrorists." Pasqua headed the Rally for France, a sovereigntist party, for a while in association with Philippe de Villiers. At the 1999 European Parliament election, their list got ahead of the RPR list. He served as the President of the General Council of the Hauts-de-Seine from 1988 to 2004. In 2004, he was elected senator by an electoral college. In 2008, Pasqua was convicted of illegal lobbying in the Mitterrand–Pasqua affair during his time serving as French Interior Minister. He was sentenced to a one-year jail term. In 2005, a US Senate report accused him, along with the British Respect politician George Galloway, of receiving the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme. Pasqua denied the charges and pointed out that he never met Saddam Hussein, had never been to Iraq, and never cultivated any political ties with that country. In a lengthy written rebuttal to the Senate report, Charles Pasqua pointed out further that since the oil vouchers were lifted by a legal entity incorporated in a European country, it should be relatively easy for investigators to uncover the masterminds behind the fraud instead of making accusations based on "sensational" press articles.
