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| - Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing condemned on Wednesday the "grotesque" allegations of sexual assault made against him by a German journalist. Prosecutors last month opened an investigation after claims by reporter Ann-Kathrin Stracke that the former president, now 94, repeatedly touched her behind in his Paris office after an interview in 2018. "It is an allusion to an event which would have occurred two years ago, which would have been a gesture that nobody can remember," the former head of state told RTL. According to Giscard d'Estaing, Stracke is "obviously someone who is trying to give herself a role, an importance which she obviously does not have and which I hope will be taken from her". "It was grotesque, and the grotesque does not wound," he said, contradicting his lawyer who last month said that the former president was "very upset and hurt" by the allegations. In the interview, which came the day before the anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's famous radio appeal to the French in 1940, Giscard d'Estaing also took a swipe at the current president Emmanuel Macron. "There is a president with a fairly broad power and there is no longer a manager, which explains to a certain extent the wavering that we went through during the epidemic period," he said. Giscard d'Estaing served for one term from 1974 until 1981, when he lost the election to Francois Mitterrand. cg/cs/eb/bsp/bp
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