Takieddine affair: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy summoned again

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, wife of former French head of state Nicolas Sarkozy, has been summoned again in a part of the sprawling investigation into the Libyan financing of her husband’s 2007 presidential campaign.

According to a source close to the case on Saturday to AFP, the 56-year-old singer and former top model faces prosecution for receiving stolen goods, criminal conspiracy to prepare fraudulent trials as part of an organized gang and for the corruption of Lebanese judicial personnel. Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy, who married Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008, could emerge from this interrogation, the date of which has not been specified, charged or with the more favorable status of assisted witness. She 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.

The judicial investigation opened in May 2021 aims to unravel the roles played by a dozen protagonists from Mr. Sarkozy’s entourage, in the spectacular about-face of the Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine during an interview co-organized by the boss of the BestImage agency and celebrity press figure “Mimi” Marchand, real name Michèle Marchand.

At the end of 2020, Mr. Takieddine suddenly and temporarily cleared the ex-president (2007-2012) after having been his main accuser in the so-called “Libyan funds” file, which would have been paid by the regime of the ex-dictator Libyan Muammar Gaddafi. Suspected of having approved these maneuvers, Mr. Sarkozy, who disputes the facts, must be tried at the beginning of next year for “concealment of embezzlement of public funds”, “passive corruption” and “illegal financing of an electoral campaign” in particular. . In April, his lawyers filed a motion to overturn this measure and, recently, a request to disorient the investigation.

Recently, according to elements of the investigation of which AFP was aware and partly revealed by the daily Le Parisien, the financial investigating judge in charge of the case believes he has discovered evidence of the use of a secret telephone line by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

According to the judge, the phone was used in particular by the former presidential couple to receive messages from “Mimi” Marchand, also implicated, on the progress of the operation. 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 payment.

During her hearing in early May, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy denied that it was her phone. When contacted, the singer’s lawyer, Paul Mallet, did not respond to AFP.

Main accuser of Mr. Sarkozy and refugee in Lebanon to escape incarceration in France, Ziad Takieddine made an about-face at the end of 2020 by declaring in two media that the ex-president had “not touched a cent, cash or not cash, for the presidential election” of 2007. However, he returned to his remarks two months later before the investigating magistrates.