The interrogation was suspended on Tuesday but Nicolas Sarkozy will continue to answer questions from an investigating judge in Paris this Wednesday. The former president is questioned about alleged fraudulent maneuvers to exonerate him in the affair of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign.
The interrogation of the former head of state was suspended Tuesday evening around 7:30 p.m. He is heard “in first appearance interrogation by the investigating magistrates as part of the judicial investigation opened in May 2021” after the retraction of Ziad Takieddine, according to a judicial source. “His summons concerns the counts of concealment of bribery, criminal association with a view to the preparation of organized gang fraud and criminal association with a view to the corruption of foreign judicial personnel,” specified this source.
A near indictment?
Depending on the content of his statements before the investigating magistrate and the assessment made by him, Nicolas Sarkozy could emerge from this interrogation indicted or under the less incriminating status of assisted witness, which gives him access to the file while excluding a trial concerning him.
The former head of state, who contested any participation in the events, is suspected of having given his approval or allowed several people who would have tried to defraud justice to exonerate him in the Libyan case, which will be, him, tried in early 2025. In addition to Nicolas Sarkozy, justice suspects at least nine protagonists of having participated, to varying degrees and times, in this operation, including the queen of the paparazzi Mimi Marchand, the crook Noël Dubus and even the late financier Pierre Reynaud.
A spectacular about-face
The first event that attracted the attention of the justice system was the spectacular about-face of the Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine, in an interview with Paris Match-BFMTV in mid-November 2020, then in a letter sent a month later to French investigating magistrates. On these two occasions, Ziad Takieddine assured that Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign had not been financed by the Libyans, a statement contrary to his previous assertions in the file.
For investigators, according to recently established figures, at least 608,000 euros could have been used in this operation. Some of the protagonists would then, in the first half of 2021, also look for hypothetical proof that the resounding Libyan document, published between the two rounds of the 2012 presidential election by Mediapart and mentioning financing of the 2007 campaign of Mr. Sarkozy, to the tune of 50 million euros, was a fake. They would have once again tried to obtain the release in Lebanon of a Gaddafi son in the hope that the family of the late Libyan dictator would facilitate the exoneration of Nicolas Sarkozy.
A “major serious matter”
In this “case of major seriousness”, in the words of the investigating judge in an order at the end of 2021, the former head of state firmly contested any participation in the incriminated facts for twelve hours during his hearing free in mid-June, before the financial investigators of the central office against corruption (OCLCIFF).
He indicated that he was made aware of Ziad Takieddine’s wish to change his version by Mimi Marchand in October 2020, a month before the information was public. But “no concrete material element, telephone, can incriminate me in this madness, neither closely, nor remotely,” assured Nicolas Sarkozy.
Judicial odyssey
Questioned at length about his diary and telephone calls from the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, which suggest meetings or conversations at key moments with protagonists in the case, he mentioned a few “coincidences” and denied any significant contact with most of them. of those involved.
For him, “this whole little gang has only the sole concern of showing off each other” by pretending to be in contact with him, the ex-president said. The legal agenda of Nicolas Sarkozy, who is currently promoting his latest book “Le temps des combats”, is very busy. In addition to the Libyan financing trial, he will be tried in November on appeal in the Bygmalion case. In another case, that known as “Bismuth”, the Constitutional Council opened the way on Thursday to a possible new trial for procedural reasons.