“Yes, she deceived me”: at the beginning of October before the judges, Nicolas Sarkozy presented himself as a victim of maneuvers by the queen of the paparazzi Mimi Marchand, in the investigation into the retraction of his accusations through Ziad Takieddine of Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign. The judicial investigation, opened in May 2021, concerns an attempt to deceive French justice in the investigation into possible Libyan financing of its 2007 presidential campaign, which will be the subject of a trial in early 2025.
The first step would have consisted of obtaining the retraction of the accusations of the sulphurous Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine, at the end of 2020. Then, in the first half of 2021, some of those accused would have tried to obtain proof that the resounding Libyan document published by Mediapart in 2012 evoking funding of 50 million euros was a fake, or even to release one of Gaddafi’s sons detained in Lebanon so that he could help exonerate Nicolas Sarkozy.
Neither “organizer”, “beneficiary”, “validator” or even “aware”
Among the ten protagonists implicated at varying times or degrees, in addition to the ex-president and Mimi Marchand we find the intermediary Noël Dubus, already convicted of fraud, the powerful business leader David Layani, etc. Before two investigating magistrates and two representatives of the financial prosecutor’s office, Nicolas Sarkozy presented himself during twenty-two hours of interrogation over four days as wrongly implicated in this affair because of a “small gang” of greedy “nickel feet”. silver.
Neither “organizer”, “beneficiary”, “validator” or even “in the know”, he denies being the “big devil” pulling the strings of this story. What about his diary and telephony at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, which show meetings or conversations at key moments with protagonists in the case? Nicolas Sarkozy answers “coincidences”. For the tutelary figure of the French right, we must first look for those responsible in Noël Dubus and Ziad Takieddine, “two crooks who try to defraud each other”, “mafiosi” for whom “the practice of lying is cultural” .
“The worst that humanity can generate”
The second, his main accuser in the Libyan issue, “is perhaps the worst that humanity can generate,” he says. But why, reframes the judge, Ziad Takieddine who “gave many versions of the facts in the Libyan affair (…) no longer says” in November 2020 that Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign “was financed by Libya”, then that he had always been “constant on (this) point”? “He is irrational,” says Nicolas Sarkozy. Why, also asks the magistrate, did the ex-president welcome this shift at the time via a triumphant press release, giving him credit? It was “an emotional reaction, with my guts”, but also useful in his defense media strategy, replies Nicolas Sarkozy.
In long developments, Nicolas Sarkozy also calls into question one of the central characters of the file, Michèle Marchand, in her own words her “only link” with the “nickel-plated feet” of the file. The ex-president recounts his initial “total skepticism” when “Mimi” allegedly informed him in October 2020 of an “initiative” around Ziad Takieddine, then how he was then “amazed” by discovering a month later the result on BFMTV and in Paris Match: the retraction.
” Your friend “
But now, Nicolas Sarkozy sees things differently: “I was deceived”, he assures, “in the sense that I was not aware of ‘the whole back kitchen’, particularly financial” and the “conditions of completion” of the operation. According to investigations, 60,000 euros were given to Takieddine, and 100,000 to four million euros promised. Nicolas Sarkozy makes “this little lady who had her head inflated with helium” responsible for one of the main elements against him.
Justice indeed sees proof that the group’s actions were known to Nicolas Sarkozy in his dedication of one of his books to Noël Dubus, made at his home and signed “your friend”. He assures him that he signed without knowing the crook, while Mimi Marchand denies having played a role. Me Caroline Toby, lawyer for the latter, indicated that she had “no comment to make on the way in which Nicolas Sarkozy defends himself. My client intends to reserve her statements to her judge as from the beginning.”
“Given the level of responsibilities that you have exercised and your presence at the forefront of the political scene for more than thirty years, we may be surprised that you have not further questioned the requests that Ms. Marchand made of you” several times in 2020 in favor of protagonists in the case, underlines one of the investigating magistrates. In return, Nicolas Sarkozy repeats his “feeling of having been deceived”. Without convincing at this stage the judges, who indicted him on October 6 for concealment of witness tampering and criminal association with a view to fraud in the judgment by an organized gang.