Former minister Luc Ferry says he'll sue for libel

Former education minister Luc Ferry said on Sunday he will begin legal action against those who have accused him of taking payment for a "phantom job", following the controversy over his role at Paris Diderot university.

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Luc Ferry insists the row over his job at the university is politically motivated and an attempt to discredit him, after he made potentially damaging accusations that an unnamed former minister was involved in a paedophile orgy in Morocco.

On Wednesday, the newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné reported that Ferry had not given the philosophy lectures he was employed to deliver at Paris Diderot, but had been paid by the university nevertheless.

The office of the French prime minister announced on Friday that it would repay the university for Ferry's salary, because he has been on secondment as an advisor to the prime minister over the past academic year. 

Ferry insists that his salary at the university was not in return for hours worked but that he was paid as president of a think tank, the CAS, and that he was on attachment to Matignon, (the French Prime Minister's office) in that capacity as an advisor.