France’s Sarkozy tells trial he received no campaign funds from Libya

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has vigorously denounced receiving any money from Muammar Gadhafi at a Paris trial over the alleged illegal financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by the Libyan government while under its late dictator.

Sarkozy, who served from 2007 to 2012, is facing charges of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of embezzlement of public funds and criminal association, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

In his first remarks since the trial started this week, Sarkozy said on Thursday: “You will never find one Libyan euro, one Libyan cent in my campaign.”

Sarkozy, a lawyer by training, argued that “groups of liars and crooks,” including the “Gadhafi clan,” have fed allegations to investigators as part of a “plot”. The trial is due to run until 10 April.

The case emerged in March 2011, when a Libyan news agency reported that the Gadhafi government had financed Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.

Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to push for military intervention in Libya in 2011, when pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world.

Gadhafi was killed by opposition fighters in October that same year, ending his authoritarian four-decade rule of the North African country.

“Revelations (from Libya) about the alleged financing of my campaign came a few hours after my statement that ‘Gadhafi must go’,” Sarkozy told the court. “What credibility can be given to such statements marked by the seal of vengeance?”

Sarkozy also said that a key document said to be a note from Libya’s secret services, mentioning Gadhafi’s agreement to provide Sarkozy’s campaign €50 million in financing, was fake.

French investigative magistrates said in 2016 the document has all the characteristics of authenticity, although there is no definitive evidence that such a transaction took place.

“I want you to feel the indignation, sincerity and anger,” Sarkozy told the court. “There is no corruption money because there was no corruption of the (presidential) candidate.”

No-show from other defendants

French investigators analysed several trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy, then the interior minister, from 2005 to 2007, including his chief of staff Claude Guéant.

Sarkozy noted that weeks after he arrived in office in 2007, he was able to make a deal with Gadhafi to release five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor.

The medics had twice been sentenced to death in Libya for allegedly infecting hundreds of children in the coastal city of Benghazi with HIV in the late 1990s. The charges were widely denounced abroad as false.

The day after the release, during Sarkozy’s visit to Tripoli, France and Libya signed wide-ranging cooperation agreements in areas such as defence, health, and counterterrorism.

The trial involves 11 other defendants, including three former ministers. Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, accused of having played the role of intermediary, has fled to Lebanon and did not appear at the Paris court.

Another co-defendant, Gadhafi’s former chief of staff and treasurer, Bashir Saleh, did not attend the trial. Saleh sought refuge in France during the Libyan civil war, then moved to South Africa before settling in the United Arab Emirates.

Sarkozy has been convicted in two other scandals, but the Libyan case appears to be the one most likely to significantly affect his legacy.

France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, last month upheld a conviction against Sarkozy of corruption and influence peddling while he was head of state. He was sentenced to one year under house arrest with an electronic bracelet.

The case was revealed as investigative judges were listening to wiretapped phone conversations during the Libya inquiry.

In February last year, an appeals court in Paris found Sarkozy guilty of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 re-election bid.

Additional sources • AP