the essential
This is an unprecedented affair. For the first time, a former president suspected of corruption, concealment of embezzlement of public funds, criminal conspiracy and illegal financing of an electoral campaign appears in court with 11 co-defendants, including three former ministers. A historic trial which is expected to last four months.
End of year vacations, with family, in the Seychelles sun… This January 6, business resumes for Nicolas Sarkozy. Definitively sentenced, on December 18, to three years in prison – including one year of home detention under electronic surveillance – for “corruption and influence peddling” in the “Bismuth” file (the wiretapping affair), the former President of the Republic (2007-2012) is back before the courts, with eleven co-defendants, as part of a historic trial followed by the whole world: never before a former French head of state and his close guard were thus judged.
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State affair or “fable”?
An extraordinary scandal at the top of republican institutions, as presumed by the long and meticulous judicial investigation which requested the cooperation of 17 countries? Or even the “craziest and most serious story of the Fifth Republic”, as presented by Mediapart, which uncovered the affair in 2011 and then chained together the revelations over the course of 160 well-documented articles..? Or “fable” as Nicolas Sarkozy has always asserted?
The latter “awaits with determination these four months of hearing [pour] “to combat the artificial construction imagined by the prosecution”, declares his lawyer Christophe Ingrain, whose client completely denies the “Libyan financing of the campaign. “
Until April 10, the debates will therefore have to determine whether Tripoli has indeed financed – or not – with suitcases of banknotes and millions of euros, the victorious presidential campaign of the right-wing candidate, in exchange for a help for Libya's return to the international stage with fanfare…
“Bundle of serious and consistent clues”
Certainly, the Bedouin tent of the “guide of the revolution” in the grounds of the Marigny hotel in December 2007, during his visit to Paris for a diplomatic rehabilitation with great fanfare, now belongs to History… But it will not be missed without no doubt, either, of being mentioned in the background of the “body of serious and consistent clues” which led the judges to refer Nicolas Sarkozy and three of his former ministers to the criminal court. France was the only Western democracy to receive with such pomp the Libyan dictator from Paris to Versailles via the Louvre and the presidential hunts. A gift?
Because what Nicolas Sarkozy is suspected of by the courts is indeed having linked up, through those close to him – Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux in the front row – but also sulfurous intermediaries like Ziad Takieddine (already convicted in the Karachi affair) or Alexandre Djouhri, a “corruption pact” with Muammar Gaddafi, dictator and head of a “terrorist state” banned by nations. But good customer on the arms and nuclear project side.
€50 million in a note
First visit in September 2005 by Claude Guéant, then chief of staff of Minister of the Interior Sarkozy, to discuss with Abdallah Senoussi, mastermind of the attack against UTA's DC10 and sentenced to life in France (which also arouses today the anger of the victims' families)… Then met Sarkozy-Gaddafi the following month…
At the end of 2011, Mediapart expressed the first suspicions about possible hidden financing then dropped two bombshells in March and April 2012, after consulting a note dated December 20, 2006: “the planned Libyan financing amounted to a total of €50 million”, indicates in substance the first, citing “fully settled campaign financing.”
“Infamy”, eavesdropping, black notebook…
On April 29, Nicolas Sarkozy calls the article “infamous” and in this final stretch before the presidential election, his troops blame Mediapart's revelation on the electoral campaign, the stunt of a left-wing “office.” . Nothing to be ashamed of… But the wiretaps revealed in 2014 that the former president and his lawyer Thierry Herzog called each other with mobiles registered under false names, with the suspicion of having corrupted a magistrate to access the file. . The Bismuth affair begins.
Then in 2016, it was the discovery of the notebook of the former Libyan oil minister Choukri Ghanem – found drowned in Vienna in 2012, the day after Mediapart's first revelations – which now indicates a total of €6.50 million. while Ziad Takieddine says he handed over €5 million…
“Implausible” and truth
Over the course of 10 years of investigation, the justice system identified several suspicious flows between 2005 and 2008: €1.20 million leaving Switzerland, €440,000 in the Bahamas involving the very loyal Thierry Gaubert, the €5 million in liquid recognized by Takieddine paid between the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 while from 2003 to 2013, Claude Guéant would have withdrawn only €800 in cash while he would have used €200,000 in cash… Presumed innocent, all those involved will now be able to explain and explain themselves. “If it were a series, we would say that the scenario is improbable,” Nicolas Sarkozy has already defended himself. The court will seek the truth. Not likely.
