Towards a new indictment of Nicolas Sarkozy? The former head of state has been questioned since mid-morning on Tuesday October 3 in Paris by an investigating judge in the investigation into fraudulent maneuvers seeking to exonerate him in the affair of the Libyan financing of his presidential campaign from 2007.
Nicolas Sarkozy arrived around 10 a.m. by car and his lawyers came on their side, journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP) noted. His advisors did not wish to speak.
“Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy is currently being questioned at first appearance by the investigating magistrates as part of the judicial investigation opened in May 2021” after the retraction of Ziad Takieddine, a judicial source confirmed to AFP. “His summons concerns the counts of concealment of bribery, criminal association with a view to the preparation of organized gang fraud and criminal association with a view to the corruption of foreign judicial personnel. »
Several days of interrogation
Depending on the content of his statements before the investigating magistrate and the assessment made by him, Mr. Sarkozy could emerge from this interrogation indicted or under the less incriminating status of assisted witness, which would give him access to the file while excluding a trial concerning him.
The former French president, who contested any participation in the events, is suspected of having given his approval or allowed several people who would have tried to defraud justice to exonerate him in the Libyan case, which will be judged in early 2025. This interrogation, which could last several days, was scheduled for September 12 to 14 but had been postponed.
In addition to Mr. Sarkozy, justice suspects at least nine protagonists of having participated, to varying degrees and times, in this operation, including the queen of the paparazzi Mimi Marchand, the crook Noël Dubus, the late financier Pierre Reynaud, etc. .
About-face by Ziad Takieddine
The first event that attracted the attention of the justice system was the spectacular about-face of the Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine, in an interview with Paris Match and BFM-TV in November 2020, then in a letter sent a month later late to the French investigating magistrates. On both occasions, Mr. Takieddine assured that Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign had not been financed by the Libyans, a statement contrary to his previous assertions in the file. According to investigators, according to recently established figures, at least 608,000 euros could have been used in this operation.
Some of the protagonists would then have, in the first half of 2021, also sought hypothetical proof that the resounding “Libyan document”, published between the two rounds of the 2012 presidential election by Mediapart and evoking campaign financing of 2007 from Mr. Sarkozy to the tune of 50 million euros, was a fake. They would still have tried to obtain the release in Lebanon of one of Gaddafi’s sons in the hope that the family of the late Libyan dictator would facilitate the exoneration of Mr. Sarkozy.
In this “case of major seriousness”, according to the words of the investigating judge in an order at the end of 2021, the former head of state firmly contested any participation in the incriminated facts for twelve hours during his free hearing in mid-June, before financial investigators from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF).
He indicated that he was made aware of Mr. Takieddine’s wish to change his version by Mimi Marchand in October 2020, a month before the information was public. But “no concrete material element, telephone, can incriminate me in this madness, neither closely nor remotely,” assured Mr. Sarkozy.
“Coincidences”
Questioned at length about his diary and his telephone calls at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, which suggest meetings or conversations at key moments with protagonists in the case, Mr. Sarkozy mentioned some “coincidences” and denied everything significant contact with most of the accused. “This whole little gang has the sole concern of showing off each other” by pretending to be in contact with him, the ex-president said.
The legal agenda of Mr. Sarkozy, who is currently promoting his latest book, Le Temps des combats, is very busy. In addition to the Libyan financing trial, he will be tried in November on appeal in the Bygmalion case. In another case, the so-called “Bismuth” case, the Constitutional Council opened the way on Thursday to a possible new trial for procedural reasons. “I am clean,” assured Mr. Sarkozy at the beginning of September, when questioned about all of these legal challenges.