French billionaire industrialist and senator Serge Dassault has been charged with vote buying in his former fiefdom east of Paris, a judicial source has told AFP.
Dassault, 89, was questioned for two days in February in connection with allegations that he operated an extensive system of vote buying that influenced the outcome of elections in Corbeil-Essonnes, where he was mayor from 1995 to 2009.
The source said Dassault had been charged with vote buying, complicity in illegal election campaign financing and exceeding campaign spending limits.
He is free without bail pending trial, the source said.
The senator has previously denied any wrongdoing and vowed to prove his innocence, and sources close to him refused to comment on the report.
The charges relate to three elections in Corbeil in 2008, 2009 and 2010, which were won either by Dassault or his successor and close associate Jean-Pierre Bechter.
Dassault is ranked by Forbes magazine as France's fourth-richest man and the 69th-richest in the world, with an estimated fortune of 13 billion euros ($A19 billion).
He heads the Dassault Group, which owns the country's main right-wing newspaper Le Figaro and holds a majority stake in Dassault Aviation which makes commercial and military aircraft, including the Rafale fighter jet.
The result of the 2008 vote, won by Dassault, was invalidated by the Council of State after the body which oversees public administration discovered a series of payments that could have influenced the outcome.
Bechter has already been charged, as has Cristela de Oliveira, a former official in the mayor's office who is suspected of allocating council flats to families in return for backing Dassault or Bechter.
