Nicolas Sarkozy’s home was searched on Tuesday, June 13. In the judicial information on the retraction of the accusations of Libyan financing of his presidential campaign of 2007 – formulated through Ziad Takieddine – the former president was also heard in free hearing. His wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was heard as a simple witness, learned Agence France-Presse (AFP) from a source familiar with the matter. These hearings in this case have been confirmed by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office and other sources close to the case.
The Sarkozy couple thus arrived discreetly at the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses, in Nanterre, on Tuesday morning. The former head of state was heard there under the free hearing regime, also known as “as a free suspect”, a status which allows a person suspected of having committed an offense to be questioned without putting them in jail.
Around 2:30 p.m., Mr. Sarkozy arrived at his home in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, accompanied by half a dozen investigators from the judicial police, to be searched, according to AFP. The search was still in progress around 4 p.m., according to these journalists. Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyer and entourage did not respond immediately.
Possible summons for an indictment of the former head of state
According to the analysis of his statements and the incriminating and exculpatory elements, Mr. Sarkozy could be exonerated, but he could also be given a summons for an indictment. Justice suspects at least eight protagonists of having participated, with the possible endorsement of the former head of state, in an operation so that the sulphurous Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine withdraws, at the end of 2020 against remuneration , his accusations against Mr. Sarkozy. The queen of the paparazzi Mimi Marchand is among the defendants.
At the beginning of March, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office extended the judicial investigation opened in the spring of 2021 to facts of “concealment of witness tampering”, a qualification which could correspond to the role of Nicolas Sarkozy, as it appears in certain statements by the protagonists in the investigation.
The Franco-Lebanese, who had accused the latter since 2012, had made a spectacular about-face in November 2020 on BFM-TV and Paris Match by declaring that Nicolas Sarkozy had in fact not benefited from funding from Muammar Gaddafi for the campaign of the 2007 presidential election. He went back on his remarks two months later.
Investigators recently estimated at least 608,000 euros the amount of the operation intended to obtain the withdrawal of the charges of Ziad Takieddine. The money, essentially mobilized by the financier Pierre Reynaud, who recently died, was donated to various alleged protagonists of the operation, including the intermediary Noël Dubus, already convicted of fraud, an advertiser, Ziad Takieddine and a Lebanese close to this last.
