Carla Bruni is summoned for possible indictment in the investigation into the financing of the presidential campaign of her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter is suspected of having financed his 2007 campaign with Libyan funds.
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is summoned for possible indictment in the investigation into the 2020 retraction of intermediary Ziad Takieddine, who accuses her husband Nicolas Sarkozy of having financed his 2007 presidential campaign with Libyan funds.
According to a source close to the case, the model and singer faces prosecution for concealment of witness tampering, criminal conspiracy with a view to preparing trial fraud by an organized gang and with a view to the corruption of Lebanese judicial personnel.
Ms Bruni-Sarkozy could emerge from this interrogation, the date of which has not been specified, under formal investigation or under the more favourable status of assisted witness. The judicial investigation opened in May 2021 is looking into the possible attempt by a dozen protagonists in this case to mislead the French justice system in the Libyan case, the main part of which will be judged in early 2025.
The former president was indicted in October, suspected of having approved these maneuvers. In April, his lawyers filed a request to have this measure annulled and, recently, a request to relocate the investigation. His wife has already been questioned twice by investigators from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF): first as a witness in June 2023, then as a suspect in early May.
Telephone line
Recently, according to elements of the investigation that AFP has learned of and partly revealed by Le Parisien, it was a telephone belonging to the former paparazzi pope, “Mimi” Marchand (real name Michèle Marchand), also implicated, that increased the charges against the 56-year-old artist. The financial investigating judge in charge of the case believes he found evidence of Ms. Marchand’s use of a secret telephone line, which she denies.
At the beginning of December 2019, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy asked her IT specialist “a new line completely disconnected from the rest“. He subscribed to this subscription in his name the same month. According to the judge, Mimi Marchand sent messages to the former presidential couple via this mobile phone.
One of them seems to prove that the former First Lady was informed in advance of Ms. Marchand’s trip to Beirut in mid-October 2020 for the famous interview in which Mr. Takieddine retracted, possibly for compensation.
Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy had previously said she only knew about it when the interview was published, on November 11, 2020. “Why did you lie?” the OCLCIFF investigator asked her in early May. “Even if I knew she was going (to Lebanon), I didn’t know why,” she defends herself.
“Very manipulative”
The judge also found a message sent on this famous occult line two weeks before the first wave of arrests in the case, in June 2021: Mimi Marchand announces that “a friend came home last night” and that “Everything is fine”. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy assured that she does not “see at all what (Mimi Marchand) can be talking about”.
The investigator recalls that this message follows for a few hours the trip to Germany of two protagonists in the case to hand over funds which could have been used to corrupt Lebanese magistrates to release from prison one of Gaddafi’s sons, Hannibal, so that he helps exonerate Nicolas Sarkozy. “Oh dear”, reacts Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, revived. “I don’t know. Cash… Hannibal Gaddafi… We’re in a sphere where I don’t know what to tell you.”
Again questioned about the elements suggesting the thesis of a telephone belonging to her, Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy replied: “Quite. I understand well. But it is not my number”. Before adding: “I’m trying to come up with explanations.”
Asked to conclude, Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy says she is “stupidly naive” and adds that she “feels responsible for the indictment.” “It’s me who should be,” she asserts, presenting herself as her husband’s “only contact” with Mimi Marchand, who “used my husband’s name and mine (…) to give yourself weight with your friends”, as Nicolas Sarkozy says. Mimi Marchand, she continues, “is clever, but not necessarily in the truth (…) She is very manipulative”.
When asked, the singer’s lawyer, Me Paul Mallet, did not respond.
Carla Bruni Nicolas Sarkozy Libyan funds 2007 presidential campaign indicted
