Sarkozy is held over ‘Gaddafi’s £42m donation’
‘Give money back to Libya’
FORMER French president Nicolas Sarkozy was taken into police custody yesterday over claims he received £42million in kickbacks from Colonel Gaddafi.
The huge sum was said to have helped fund Mr Sarkozy’s successful 2007 election campaign.
Such a donation would break all France’s rules on the funding of political campaigns. It is said to have been laundered through bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland.
The allegations have dogged Mr Sarkozy, 63, since 2012 and include claims that arms dealer Ziad Takieddine, acting as a middle man, handed over three suitcases stuffed with euros. The former president, who served a single five-year term, is now under renewed pressure to explain himself in the light of what his opponents call compelling evidence. He could be charged with corruption offences within the next 48 hours.
An apparently incriminating document showing a deal between Mr Sarkozy and Gaddafi emerged following an investigation into the activities of Takieddine. Written in Arabic and signed by Gaddafi’s intelligence chief Mussa Kussa in 2006, it refers to an ‘agreement in principle to support the campaign for the candidate for the presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, for a sum equivalent to €50million’.
It was among a bundle of evidence leaked by members of Libya’s National Transitional Council, which governed the country after Gaddafi was killed in 2011, to French news site Mediapart.
A government briefing note among the papers points to numerous visits to Libya by Mr Sarkozy and his colleagues that were aimed at securing funding. One, said to have taken place in October 2005, led to ‘campaign finance to NS’ being ‘all paid’ – assumed to be a reference to Mr Sarkozy.
At the time, the politician was an ambitious interior minister raising money to bid for the presidency. Eyebrows were raised when Gaddafi was honoured with a state visit to Paris in late 2007 – just seven months after Mr Sarkozy took office. He was referred to as the ‘Brother Leader’ by the French president, and allowed to pitch his tent next to the Elysee Palace.
Gaddafi’s son, Saif-Al Islam, has previously claimed that Libya financed Mr Sarkozy’s election and demanded that ‘this clown gives back the money to the Libyan people’.
Mr Sarkozy could not be prosecuted as France’s head of state but police raided his Paris home within days of him losing the 2012 presidential election to Francois Hollande. He dismisses the allegations, saying they are driven by Libyan regime members furious over his country’s participation in the military strikes that ended Gaddafi’s 41-year rule.