Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife is being heard this Thursday, May 2 as part of the affair of the retraction of the sulfur intermediary in 2020, who had returned to his accusations against the ex-president on Libyan financing in 2007. She is suspected of minimum of having played a role of point of contact between different protagonists.
The singer, model and wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is heard this Thursday, May 2 as part of the investigation into the retraction in 2020 of the intermediary Ziad Takieddine, who accuses Nicolas Sarkozy of having financed his campaign presidential election 2007 with Libyan funds. Since May 2021, two judges have been investigating what they describe as a “matter of major seriousness”. They suspect, among others, the intermediary Noël Dubus, the paparazzi “pope” Mimi Marchand or the late financier Pierre Reynaud of having paid or promised to pay Takieddine, with the possible approval of Nicolas Sarkozy, so that the intermediary withdraws his about.
The former head of state was also indicted in this case at the beginning of October, for concealment of witness tampering and criminal association with a view to preparing trial fraud by an organized gang.
Already heard as a witness in this judicial investigation in June 2023, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is this time questioned in open hearing but as a person implicated by investigators from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF) in Nanterre.
“Will to conceal” and PCR test
According to elements of the investigation, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was first interviewed as a simple witness, Michèle Marchand (known as “Mimi”), a celebrity press figure, also implicated in the case, having argued meetings with his friend, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, to justify trips to the head of state’s home at key moments of the operation.
But according to a source close to the case, the investigating judge has since questioned various elements against him, and in particular on a “desire to conceal” of Carla Bruni while all her messages exchanged with Michèle Marchand would have been deleted on June 5, 2021, the day the latter was indicted. Then, Carla Bruni is suspected of having helped her and the paparazzi Sébastien Valiela to obtain a PCR test in mid-October 2020, in the midst of the Covid crisis, allowing them to go to Lebanon to do the interview which will give rise to the retraction of Takieddine. The ex-model is therefore suspected of having played at least a role as point of contact in this case between different protagonists.
The case exploded in November 2020, when Ziad Takieddine, the main prosecution witness against Nicolas Sarkozy since 2012, made a spectacular about-face on BFM TV and Paris Match by declaring that the former head of state had no “not touched a cent, cash or no cash, for the presidential election” of 2007 by the late Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi. On the run to Lebanon, to escape his conviction in the Karachi affair, Takieddine retracted his remarks two months later before the investigating magistrates.
The National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) opened a judicial investigation into these facts in May 2021, before a first wave of arrests the following month. In this case, there are now eleven protagonists, including Carla Bruni, who are suspected of having worked, at varying times and degrees, in this operation which was mainly aimed at deceiving French justice.