Muammar Gaddafi Archives

Sarkozy charged with receiving illicit Libyan campaign financing

by admin | May 25, 2021 | World

Paris : Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been charged with receiving illicit financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for his 2007 election campaign.

After the former head of state was questioned in police custody over two days, a three-judge panel on Wednesday evening charged Sarkozy with bribe-taking, illegal campaign financing and receiving Libyan public funds, reports Efe news.

The 63-year-old Sarkozy, France’s centre-right president from 2007 to 2012, is already facing illicit campaign financing charges stemming from his unsuccessful bid for re-election in 2012.

The former President, who has been released from custody, was questioned on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Judicial Police’s headquarters in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, over allegations he accepted illicit campaign donations from Gadafi, who was deposed and killed in a Western-led intervention in 2011.

It remains unknown what Sarkozy told investigators.

But Jean-Yves Dupeux, attorney for Brice Hortefeux – a former interior minister under Sarkozy who spent 15 hours on Tuesday being grilled by the same anti-corruption investigators – told the BFMTV channel that the police fired at least 200 questions at his client, who categorically denied that Sarkozy had benefited from Libyan campaign financing.

Sarkozy himself has vehemently denied the allegations, including ones levelled by Ziad Takieddine, a French-Lebanese businessman and arms broker.

In November 2016, Takieddine told French news website Mediapart that he personally transported 5 million euros ($6 million) in cash from Tripoli to Paris and hand-delivered those funds to Sarkozy, the interior minister at the time, and to Claude Gueant.

Gueant, who was the director of Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign, also is facing charges in the Libyan funding case.

Other evidence against Sarkozy includes a document published in April 2012 by Mediapart and allegedly drafted in December 2006 by Moussa Koussa, the former head of Libya’s intelligence service.

That document, which the former French president says is a forgery, pledged to provide 50 million euros for Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.

France launched an investigation into the allegations the following year.

—IANS

French ex-president Sarkozy held on funding from Gaddafi

by admin | May 25, 2021 | World

Paris : Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been taken into police custody for questioning over allegations that he received funding from the regime of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for the 2007 presidential election campaign.

Sarkozy, 63, was summoned to a police station in Nanterre and was being questioned in relation to “irregularities” over the financing of his 2007 campaign that swept him to power for a single five-year term, Le Monde daily reported citing court sources.

An inquiry was opened in April 2013 into allegations that Sarkozy’s campaign had benefited from illicit funds from Gaddafi but it was the first time that he is being questioned over the matter. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The development came several weeks after a former associate, Alexandre Djouhri, was arrested in London and later released on bail. One of Sarkozy’s former ministers and a close ally, Brice Hortefeux, was also being questioned on Tuesday, the BBC reported.

The former President can be held by police for up to 48 hours before facing magistrates.

French law bans candidates from receiving cash payments above 6,300 pounds, but the massive donation is said to have been laundered through bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland.

A document made public in Paris apparently showed that the French leader and the former Libyan dictator made an illegal financial deal, reports say.

Written in Arabic and signed by Mussa Kussa, Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, in 2006, it referred to an “agreement in principle to support the campaign for Sarkozy for a sum equivalent to 50 million euro”.

A bundle of evidence was originally leaked by senior members of Libya’s National Transitional Council to French investigative news site Mediapart, according to a Daily Mail report.

A governmental briefing note among papers sent to Mediapart pointed to numerous visits to Libya by Sarkozy and his colleagues which were aimed at securing funding, it said.

—IANS