Mimi Marchand in Le Touquet on April 22, 2017 (illustration). – AFP
To be able to move forward calmly, justice does not want to take any risk of an agreement between the protagonists in a part of the investigation into suspicions of Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy. For this, Mimi Marchand, famous figure of the press people indicted on Saturday in this case, was prohibited from contacting the former head of state, two sources close to the case said on Monday.
According to these sources, confirming information from Mediapart, Mimi Marchand was also pronounced via his judicial review a ban on contact with Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and with the editorial director of the JDD and of Paris Match, Hervé Gattegno.
Mimi Marchand “firmly contests the charges against her”
Mediapart further asserts that there would be “wiretaps revealing that Mimi Marchand would have met Nicolas Sarkozy on this issue and that the former president would have made the businesswoman hope for a contract through the hotel group Accor, which he is one of the directors ”.
Mimi Marchand’s lawyer, Caroline Toby, for her part indicated that she did not wish to make “any statement, except for the fact that (her) client firmly contests the charges against her”.
Versatile Takieddine
After two days in police custody, the boss of the paparazzi agency BestImage was indicted for “witness tampering” and “criminal association with a view to committing an organized gang scam”. The investigation follows an interview given last November by Ziad Takieddine to a journalist from the weekly Paris Match, who had traveled to Lebanon with a photographer from BestImage. In this interview, he had withdrawn his statements against Nicolas Sarkozy, while he accused him for years of having received money for his 2007 presidential campaign from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Two months later, questioned by the investigating judges in charge of the Libyan case, the intermediary, known for his versatility, claimed that his words had been “distorted” by Paris Match, which “belongs to a friend of Sarkozy”.