“There is a lot of material evidence, in reality”, declares the Mediapart journalist who revealed the affair of Libyan money in the 2007 campaign

The former president is back in court from Monday January 6 alongside three of his former ministers. According to journalist Fabrice Arfi, “bank traces” show that Nicolas Sarkozy's clan accepted money from the dictator Gaddafi to finance his campaign.

“There is a lot of physical evidence, actually”assures Fabrice Arfi, journalist at Mediapart who revealed this affair of alleged Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's victorious 2007 campaign. While the investigating judges only talk about “cluster of serious and consistent evidence” rather than irrefutable evidence, the journalist insists on the fact that “in money crimes unlike blood crimes, there is no DNA, no fingerprint on the tickets”.

This case required 10 years of investigation, he recalls, pointing out that the trial would therefore not have been held “on the basis simply of volatile elements”. “The investigation documented the existence, thanks to bank traces, of payments from the Libyan dictatorship, arriving in French pocketsdetails Fabrice Arfi, mentioning in particular a sum of 440,000 euros, “arrived on an account of someone close to Nicolas Sarkozy in the Bahamas” coinciding with a diary note entitled “NS campaign”. In return, according to the journalist, the regime of Muammar Gaddafi would have benefited from “very diverse favors, diplomatic, legal and economic”he specifies. He also mentions numerous other suspicious transactions, including the 5 million that the intermediary Ziad Takieddine, “the alleged corrupt agent”, confessed “have been transported between Libya and the Ministry of the Interior”.

The trial is expected to last three months. The former head of state, who initially denounced a case without proof based only on “hate“, will not be alone on the bench of defendants, who are 12 in total. Alongside Nicolas Sarkozy are his most loyal ministers of the time, Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux as well as Eric Woerth, ex-treasurer of the UMP and president of the Financing Association for the 2007 campaign.

These four men, who have no longer had the right to speak to each other since their indictment 7 years ago, will find themselves before the Paris judicial court. They will be tried for “corruption, concealment of embezzlement of public funds, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy”. This affair, according to the former president, cost him his re-election in 2012, against Francois Hollande. Since this Gaddafi affair broke out 14 years ago, the right has never returned to victory.