Nicolas Sarkozy welcoming Muammar Gaddafi to the Elysée Palace in Paris on December 10, 2007, on the first day of an official visit by the Libyan dictator. JOBARD/SIPA
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The former head of state, suspected of having “entered into” a “corruption pact” with the dictator Muammar Gaddafi in order to ensure his financial support during the 2007 presidential election, appears in court from this Monday 6 January before the Paris criminal court alongside twelve other defendants. Tried for corruption, concealment of embezzlement of public funds, illegal campaign financing and criminal association, he faces ten years in prison.
« Follow the money » (“Follow the money”). This adage, popularized by the film “The President's Men” (1976) – in which two journalists from the “Washington Post” investigate the Watergate scandal and the excesses of American President Richard Nixon (1969-1974) – has never been will have been at this point at the heart of French legal investigations. For more than ten years, between 2012 and 2023, investigating judges succeeded one another to “follow the money” which would have passed between the corrupt regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi – who fell in 2011 – and the clan of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Faced with an intertwining of financial flows between Tripoli, Switzerland and sometimes Lebanon, a strange villa on the Côte d'Azur and a motley (and amnesiac) collection of political courtiers, sometimes become ministers, shadow businessmen and greedy, the magistrates have acquired a conviction: Nicolas Sarkozy did indeed enter into a “corruption pact” with Muammar Gaddafi in 2005 in order to ensure his financial support during from his court…
