The Prosecutor's Office asks to try Nicolas Sarkozy for the possible Libyan financing of his 2007 electoral campaign
The French National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) requested this Thursday to place former President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) in the dock for the alleged illegal Libyan financing of the 2007 electoral campaign that brought him to power.
In addition, the Prosecutor's Office requested the prosecution of twelve other people, including former Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, according to the agency in a statement.
The 68-year-old conservative Sarkozy is accused of four counts: misappropriation of public funds, passive corruption, illegal financing of an electoral campaign and criminal association with a view to committing an offense punishable by more than ten years in prison.
Also accused are Conservative MP and former minister Éric Woerth, who was treasurer of that electoral campaign, and Claude Guéant, secretary general of the Elysée during most of Sarkozy's presidency.
five million euros
Another of the defendants is the French-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine, who assured that between 2006 and 2007 he gave five million euros to Sarkozy, who was still Minister of the Interior at the time, and to Guéant, his chief of staff.
This case refers to the alleged financing of the 2007 presidential campaign, the one that led him to the Elysee, with funds sent by the then Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Nicolas Sarkozy was formally indicted for this case in March 2018, and has always claimed his innocence.
It attributes the accusation to a “shameful machination”, a revenge by the Gaddafi clan for leading the international operation that ended with the death of the Libyan dictator in October 2011 at the hands of opposition forces.
The prosecution's request to try the thirteen defendants comes after ten years of investigations in which magistrates were sent to various countries, such as Libya, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland or Malaysia, in a summary that spans several tens of thousands of pages.
Two prior convictions
This is the third legal case facing Sarkozy, president between 2007 and 2012, and he has already been judicially convicted in the first two. On March 1, 2021, Sarkozy became the first former French president to be sentenced to a final prison sentence, being sentenced to three years in prison, two of them exempt from compliance and the third under house arrest, for corruption and drug trafficking. influences.
Next Wednesday, the Paris Court of Appeal will issue its ruling on the appeal filed by the former president against that sentence, which closed any possibility of a return to active politics.
That case referred to the contacts that Sarkozy's then lawyer, Thierry Herzog, had with a Supreme Court magistrate to obtain personal benefits for the former president in other cases in exchange for aid for the judge's promotion.
And on September 30, 2021, Sarkozy was sentenced to one year in prison, which he could serve under house arrest if confirmed on appeal, for illegally financing his 2012 presidential campaign, in which he was defeated by the socialist François Hollande.. That ruling has also been appealed. The appeal trial of this case will begin on November 8.
In addition, Nicolas Sarkozy testified as a witness in March 2021 in the trial against several of his collaborators in the Élysée for corruption, in the so-called 'case of the polls'. That process ended with several convictions for commissioning hundreds of opinion polls without public bidding, many of them also not referring to Sarkozy but to political rivals.