Already heard as a witness in this judicial investigation in June 2023, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is this time questioned in a free hearing as a person accused by investigators from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF) in Nanterre.
The former head of state was indicted in this case at the beginning of October, for concealment of witness tampering and criminal association with a view to preparing trial fraud by an organized gang.
According to elements of the investigation, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was first heard as a simple witness in particular because “Mimi” Marchand – real name Michèle Marchand, figure of the peope press -, also implicated in the file, had argued about meetings with his friend, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, to justify trips to the head of state’s home at key moments of the operation.
But according to a Source close to the case, the investigating judge has since questioned various elements against him, and in particular a “desire to conceal” Carla Bruni while all her messages exchanged with Ms. Marchand were allegedly deleted on 5 June 2021, day of the latter’s indictment.
The ex-model is therefore suspected of having played at least a role as point of contact in this matter between different protagonists.
Hearings have been carried out in recent months in his entourage, another Source close to the matter told AFP.
The affair exploded in November 2020 when Ziad Takieddine, the main prosecution witness against Nicolas Sarkozy since 2012, made a spectacular about-face on BFMTV and Paris Match by declaring that the former head of state had “not not received a cent, cash or no cash, for the 2007 presidential election from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
On the run to Lebanon, to escape his conviction in the Karachi affair, Mr. Takieddine retracted his remarks two months later before the investigating magistrates.
The PNF opened a judicial investigation into these facts in May 2021, before a first wave of arrests the following month, which notably concerned the “queen of the paparazzi”.
In this case, there are now eleven protagonists, including Ms. Bruni, who are suspected of having worked, at varying times and degrees, in this operation which was mainly aimed at deceiving French justice.
Among those accused, in addition to Mr. Sarkozy, Ms. Marchand, the intermediary Noël Dubus, already convicted of fraud, the powerful business leader David Layani, etc. The proceedings against the financier Pierre Reynaud, who died in May 2023, are over.
