The French Prosecutor’s Office asks to try Sarkozy for the possible Libyan financing of his 2007 campaign

The French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) requested this Thursday to sit the former president in the dock Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) for the alleged illegal Libyan financing of the 2007 election campaign that brought him to power.

In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office requested the prosecution of twelve other people, including the former Minister of the Interior Brice Hortefeuxas detailed by the agency in a statement collected by efe.

The conservative Sarkozy, 68, is charged with four counts: diversion of public funds, passive corruption, illegal financing of an electoral campaign and association of criminals with a view to committing an offense punishable by more than ten years in prison.

[El expresidente francés Nicolas Sarkozy, condenado a tres años de prisión por corrupción]

The deputy and former Conservative minister are also accused Eric Woerthwho was treasurer of that electoral campaign, and Claude GuéantSecretary General of the Élysée during most of Sarkozy’s presidency.

Another of the defendants is the Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddinewho assured that between 2006 and 2007 he gave five million euros to Sarkozy, who was still Minister of the Interior at the time, since guéanthis chief of staff.

This case refers to the alleged financing of the 2007 presidential campaign, the one that led him to the Elysee, with funds sent by the then Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Nicolas Sarkozy was formally indicted for this case in March 2018, and has always defended his innocence.

He attributes the accusation to a “shameful machination”a revenge of the Gaddafi clan for leading the international operation that ended with the death of the Libyan dictator in October 2011 at the hands of opposition forces.

The Prosecutor’s request to try the thirteen defendants comes after ten years of investigations in which magistrates were sent to various countries, such as Libya, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland or Malaysia, in a summary that spans several tens of thousands of pages.

convicted twice

This is the third legal case facing Sarkozypresident between 2007 and 2012, and who has already been judicially convicted in the first two.

On March 1, 2021, Sarkozy became the first former French president to be sentenced to a final prison sentence, after being sentenced to three years in prisontwo of them exempt from compliance and the third under house arrest, for corruption and influence peddling.

[Sarkozy, condenado por financiación ilegal de su campaña a las presidenciales de 2012]

Next Wednesday, the Paris Court of Appeal will issue its ruling on the appeal filed by the former president against that sentence, which closed any possibility of a return to active politics.

That case referred to the contacts that Sarkozy’s lawyer at the time had, Thierry Herzogwith a Supreme Court magistrate to obtain personal benefits in favor of the former president in other cases in exchange for aid for the promotion of the judge.

And on September 30, 2021, Sarkozy was sentenced to one year in jail, which he could serve under house arrest if upheld on appeal, for the illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaignin which he was defeated by the socialist François Hollande. That ruling has also been appealed.

The appeal trial of this case will begin on November 8.

In addition, Nicolas Sarkozy testified as a witness in March 2021 in the trial against several of his collaborators in the Élysée for corruption, in the so-called “case of the polls”.

That process ended with several convictions for commissioning hundreds of opinion polls without public bidding, many of them also not referring to Sarkozy but to political rivals.