New legal front for Nicolas Sarkozy: threatened with a trial for the possible Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, the former head of state was heard in free hearing then raided Tuesday in the incidental investigation on suspicion of tampering with key witness Ziad Takieddine.
According to a source close to the case at AFP, confirmed by a judicial source, the former head of state was heard under the regime of free hearing, also known as free suspect, which allows to question a person suspected of having committed an offense without taking him into custody.
His wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was heard as a simple witness, according to this source.
The Sarkozy couple arrived discreetly at the Oclciff (Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Crimes), in Nanterre, on Tuesday morning, in front of which AFP journalists were present.
Around 2:30 p.m., Mr. Sarkozy drove to his home in a private cul-de-sac in the 16th arrondissement of Paris to be searched, followed by half a dozen investigators, AFP journalists noted.
Asked by AFP, Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyer and entourage did not respond immediately.
Depending on the analysis that will be made of his statements and the incriminating and exculpatory evidence, Mr. Sarkozy could be exonerated, but he could also be the subject of a summons for an indictment.
The case exploded in November 2020 when Ziad Takieddine, the main prosecution witness against Nicolas Sarkozy since 2012, had made a spectacular about-face on BFMTV and Paris Match by declaring that the former head of state had ” not touched a penny, cash or no cash, for the 2007 presidential election from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
On the run to Lebanon, to escape his conviction in the Karachi case, Mr. Takieddine reconsidered his remarks two months later before the investigating magistrates.
-“Zebulon”-
The PNF opened a judicial investigation into these facts in May 2021, before a first wave of arrests the following month, which notably concerned the “queen of the paparazzi” Mimi Marchand.
According to the hearings and the elements gathered by the investigation, justice suspects to date at least eight protagonists of having participated, with the possible endorsement of the former head of state, in an operation so that the sulphurous intermediary withdraws its accusations, for a cost recently estimated at at least 608,000 euros by the investigators.
The money, essentially mobilized by the recently deceased financier Pierre Reynaud, was donated to various alleged protagonists, including the intermediary Noël Dubus, already convicted of fraud, but also an advertiser, Ziad Takieddine and a Lebanese close to this last.
At the beginning of March, the PNF extended the judicial investigation 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.
During the investigation into this “case of major gravity”, in the words of the investigating judge in an order from the end of 2021, several protagonists assured that Nicolas Sarkozy was following the operation closely even before its public revelation. , statements that seem to be corroborated by telephone exchanges.
The judge, himself, evokes in an investigation report of August 2022 “reports of the operation” which would have been made by Michèle (Mimi) Marchand to “Zébulon”, nickname attributed to Nicolas Sarkozy.
For his part, Noël Dubus declared that the former head of state had said he was “very happy” with the famous interview of November 2020 even before the public broadcast of it, or that he had ” validated the idea” a subsequent key step in this retraction.
According to elements of the investigation, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was heard on Tuesday as a simple witness, in particular because “Mimi” Marchand argued that she had met with her friend, the singer and wife of Nicolas Sarkozy to justify trips to the chef’s home. of the State at key moments of the operation.
Finally, Nicolas Sarkozy’s longtime lawyer, Thierry Herzog, was also heard as a free suspect in this case at the end of May, according to the source close to the case confirmed by the judicial source.
Regarding the main investigation into suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, the PNF requested in May the referral to correctional detention of thirteen people, including Nicolas Sarkozy. The final decision rests with the investigating judge in charge of this file.
06/13/2023 17:36:56 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
