Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is set to stand trial on Jan. 6 over allegations that deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi illegally financed his presidential campaign of 2007.
Dubbed the “Libyan case” by French media, the trial is scheduled to run until April 10, although a verdict is not expected until a later date.
Sarkozy, who held the keys to the Elysee Palace between 2007 and 2012, faces charges of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of embezzlement of public funds, and criminal association.
If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
The 69-year-old has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyer Christophe Ingrain said he is looking forward to the trial “with determination.”
“There is no Libyan financing of the campaign,” Ingrain said. “We want to believe the court will have the courage to examine the facts objectively, without being guided by the nebulous theory that poisoned the investigation.”
The scandal-dogged former president has already been convicted in two other cases, including one of corruption and influence peddling while he was president and another of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 reelection bid.
Along with Sarkozy, 11 other defendants have been charged in the case, including a trio of former ministers.
Also among the accused is Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who is said to have acted as an intermediary between the Sarkozy campaign and the Gaddafi regime, but he has fled to Lebanon and is not expected to appear at the court in Paris.
Takieddine was heavily involved in major French military contracts abroad while Sarkozy was interior minister and later president.
The case first emerged almost 14 years ago, in March 2011, when a news agency based in Libya reported that the Gaddafi regime had financed the 2007 Sarkozy campaign.
In an interview, the Libyan dictator had said, without elaborating: “It’s thanks to us that [Sarkozy] reached the presidency. We provided him with the funds that allowed him to win.”
Sarkozy, who had welcomed Gaddafi to Paris in 2007, later became one of the first leaders in the West to push for military intervention in Libya in March 2011, amid the Arab Spring.
Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, ending his four decades of rule.
In 2008, French news site Mediapart published a document purporting to be a note from Libyan intelligence, mentioning Gaddafi’s agreement to provide Sarkozy’s campaign with 50 million euros.
Sarkozy rejected the accusations, labeling the document a “blatant fake” and filing complaints for forgery, concealment, and the spreading of fake news.
While French investigators eventually said in 2016 that the document had all the characteristics of authenticity, there is no definitive evidence that any transaction took place, with the officially recorded cost of Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign coming in at 20 million euros.
Investigators looked into several trips to Libya by people close to then-interior minister Sarkozy between 2005 and 2007, including his chief of staff, Claude Guéant.
They also discovered dozens of meetings between Guéant and Takieddine, and the investigation kicked up a gear in 2016 when Takieddine told Mediapart that he had delivered three suitcases full of cash from Libya to the French Interior Ministry.
However, Takieddinne would go on to retract this statement four years later.
Since then, a separate probe was launched into witness tampering, as magistrates suspected there was an attempt to pressure Takieddine to change his story to clear Sarkozy.
Sarkozy and his wife, former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, were notified of preliminary charges as financial prosecutors said the former president is suspected of “benefitting from corruptly influencing” Takieddine.
Along with the three former French ministers and Takieddine, eight others have been charged in the investigation, including Franco-Algerian businessman Alexandre Djouhri, who is also alleged to have been an intermediary, and Gaddafi’s former chief of staff and treasurer Bashir Saleh, who sought refuge in France during the Libyan civil war.
Saleh later moved to South Africa, where he survived a 2018 shooting. He then settled in the United Arab Emirates.
Other defendants include two Saudi billionaires, a former Airbus executive, and a former banker.
Also suspected of involvement was Shukri Ghanem, Libya’s former oil minister, who was found dead in the Danube in Vienna in 2012 in mysterious circumstances.
