Sarkozy under investigation
PARIS: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation late on Wednesday over allegations his winning 2007 election campaign received millions of euros from the regime of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, a judicial source said yesterday.
Sarkozy faces possible charges including illegal campaign funding and receiving the proceeds of the embezzlement of Libyan public funds, the source said.
The conservative former president (63), who has repeatedly and vehemently denied the allegations, was released under judicial supervision after two days of questioning.
Sarkozy was president from 2007 to 2012. The year he took office, he welcomed Gaddafi to Paris for a state visit.
In 2011, France and Britain took a leading role in a Natoled campaign that helped rebels topple Gaddafi and, in October that year, kill the man who had ruled Libya, often brutally, since 1969.
Questions have long swirled about the way Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign was financed — although they did not stop him attempting a political comeback in 2016, four years after losing the presidency to socialist Francois Hollande.
In 2012, investigative news site Mediapart published a document suggesting the Gaddafi regime had agreed to cofinance Sarkozy’s campaign with about ¤50 million ($NZ85.5 million). In 2016, the site published an interview with a ‘‘middleman’’ who said he had delivered three suitcases full of what he believed to be ¤5 million euros in cases to Sarkozy and an associate in late 2006 and early 2007.