In Paris they’re calling it the French Watergate. What began as a discreet investigation into a computerized list of secret bank accounts has exploded into major scandal that threatens to disgrace President Jacques Chirac at the end of his long political career

A CD-ROM sent to an investigative judge listed Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy among industrialists, secret agents and politicians holding accounts at Luxembourg bank Clearstream, flush with kickback money from the $2.8 million sale of French frigates to Taiwan in 1991.

The list turned out to be fake, embarrassing Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who ordered an investigation into the allegations.Villepin is fending off demands for his resignation and allegations that the whole thing was a scheme to discredit Sarkozy, his chief rival for the governing party’s presidential nomination in forthcoming elections.

Now politicians are demanding that Chirac — who is widely believed to support Villepin for the nomination — break his silence over the scandal and answer questions over his own alleged role.

This president’s office insists he had little to do with it. But last week, Le Monde newspaper published extracts of testimony from an intelligence agent who said Villepin asked him to investigate Sarkozy on Chirac’s orders.

In what is likely the final year of his political life, the 73-year-old president — who served as Prime Minister 30 years ago — could see his long climb to the summit of power wither to an ignoble end. Even members of his center-right party are getting impatient with his refusal to address the controversy publicly.

“The president of the Republic, where is he? What is he doing? Has he disappeared?” said lawmaker Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, of Chirac’s Union for a Popular Movement party.