The national financial prosecutor’s office has requested a trial before the criminal court for ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and twelve people in the resounding case of suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, AFP learned on Thursday May 11 from a source. close to the file.
According to this source, the PNF asks that the former head of state (2007-2012), who contests the facts, be tried for passive corruption, criminal association, illegal financing of electoral campaign and concealment of embezzlement Libyan public.
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The criminal association offense suggests that Nicolas Sarkozy knowingly let his close associates, political supporters and intermediaries “to act in order to obtain or to attempt to obtain” under Muammar Gaddafi’s regime “financial support for the financing of his 2007 electoral campaign”at the rate of several million euros.
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It is now up to the two investigating judges in charge of this sprawling case opened since April 2013 to order or not a trial before the criminal court and, if necessary, to determine which offenses to retain.
Guéant, Woerth and Hortefeux also targeted
Thirteen people have been indicted during the ten years of investigations carried out by the Anti-Corruption Office (Oclciff) under the aegis of financial magistrates.
Among the twelve other people for whom the PNF is asking for a trial are Claude Guéant, former right-hand man of the Head of State and then minister, Eric Woerth, treasurer of the 2007 presidential campaign, and Brice Hortefeux, Nicolas Sarkozy’s confidant and former minister.
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Two businessmen, the Franco-Lebanese Ziad Takieddine and the Franco-Algerian Alexandre Djouhri, suspected of having served as intermediaries, are also among the defendants.
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A judicial investigation was opened in April 2013 after accusations by Libyan dignitaries, Ziad Takieddine and the publication by Mediapart, between the two rounds of the 2012 presidential election, of a document supposed to prove that this campaign had benefited from Libyan funds.
Testimonies, notes from the secret services of Tripoli, accusations from an intermediary, suspicious movements of funds… The magistrates gathered a sum of disturbing clues which gave substance to the thesis according to which the campaign of the former president or his entourage would have benefited from Libyan funds.
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But the Sarkozy camp disputes it since the beginning and multiplied the recourses, in vain, to obtain the cancellation of the continuations. ” Where is the money ? »had asked the judge the former head of state at the end of 2020, during an interrogation.
The former president will also know Thursday, May 17 the decision of the Court of Appeal in the file of the “listen”, which earned him a sentence at first instance to three years in prison, including one firm, for corruption and influence peddling. He will be retried from November 2023 on appeal in the Bygmalion case, which earned him a year in prison at first instance.
