Mimi Marchand at the funeral of Johnny Hallyday – Michele Marchand
Mimi Marchand, the boss of the BestImage photo agency, and a journalist from Paris Match were placed in police custody on Thursday on suspicion of “witness tampering” in the case of the possible Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007, we learned from sources familiar with the matter.
According to one of these sources, these police custody, announced by Mediapart, are carried out in Nanterre at the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (Oclciff), at the request of two Parisian financial examining magistrates.
“Witness bribery”
They would relate to suspicions of “witness bribery” and “criminal association” relating to an interview given last November by Ziad Takieddine to the journalist of Paris Match, who had traveled to Lebanon with a photographer from Bestimage, according to this source.
Asked by AFP, the national financial prosecutor’s office replied that it could not “communicate any information at this stage”. Mimi Marchand’s lawyer, Caroline Toby, did not wish to comment on the information either. In this interview, which was also the subject of a video broadcast on BFM TV, Ziad Takieddine had withdrawn his accusations against Nicolas Sarkozy, which the former head of state and his supporters were immediately congratulated.
But two months later, questioned on April 14 in Beirut by examining magistrates Aude Buresi and Marc Sommerer in charge of the sprawling Libyan case, he declared that he did not “confirm the words” of the interview. Paris Match “Which have been mishandled by the journalist”. “ Paris Match belongs to a friend of Sarkozy, they distorted my words, ”he argued, in this interrogation unveiled by AFP.
“A form of intimidation”
Like that of Michèle Marchand, nicknamed “Mimi”, the home of the journalist from Paris Match in custody, François de Labarre, was the subject of a search Thursday morning, according to several sources. In a statement, the editor of the weekly, Constance Benqué, denounced an “arrest contrary to all democratic principles” relating to “a form of intimidation” and a “violation of her rights and freedom of press “.