Investigating judges filed preliminary charges against former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin for his suspected role in a smear campaign that targeted Nicolas Sarkozy before he was France's president, his lawyer said. The preliminary charges were for «complicity in slanderous denunciations,» Villepin's lawyer Luc Brossollet said. The complex case stems from an attempt in 2003-2004 to discredit Sarkozy, who was a government minister at the time and a political rival of Villepin within their conservative UMP party, according to a report of the Associated Press.