The French National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) requested this Thursday the prosecution of former President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) 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: diversion 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, who was secretary general of the Élysée during most of Sarkozy's presidency..

Another of the defendants is the Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine, who assures 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 Gadhafi. This is the third legal case faced by Sarkozy, president between 2007 and 2012, and who has already been judicially sentenced 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 Tuesday, 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.

In addition, Nicolas Sarkozy testified as a witness in March 2021 in the trial against several of his collaborators at the Elysée for corruption, in the so-called “probes case”. That trial ended with several convictions for commissioning without public tender hundreds of opinion polls, many of them moreover not referring to Sarkozy but to political rivals.