Sarkozy defiant, but ‘finished’ in politics
PARIS: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has vowed to clear his name after being charged for financing his 2007 election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, but admitted he was “finished” in politics.
“It might take me one, two, 10 years but I’ll smash this group [of accusers] and will restore my honour,” he said during an emotion-charged prime-time television interview last night.
“I don’t plan to give an inch!” Having already stepped back from a front-line public role in 2016 after he failed with a bid to run again for president, Sarkozy told his interviewer on the TF1 channel that for himself “politics is finished”.
In an defiant half-hour performance that saw him shake with indignation at times, Sarkozy frequently referred to his accusers from Gadhafi’s regime as “sinister”, “liars” and a “group of killers”.
“If you had told me that I would have problems because of Gadhafi, I would have said: ‘What are you smoking?’” Mr Sarkozy said at one point, claiming that investigators had not found a single piece of evidence against him.
The 63-year-old, who served as French leader from 2007 to 2012, was charged with corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of Libyan public money on Thursday evening after two days of questioning in police custody.
Under the French system, charging a suspect means that investigators believe they have strong and corroborated evidence against them, but the defendant can appeal and the case can still be dropped before a trial.
The allegations that Mr Sarkozy took money from Gadhafi — whom he welcomed to Paris in 2007 but then helped to topple in 2011 — are the most serious out of several investigations that have dogged him since he left office.
“I am hurt deeply as a person, not for me, for my country,” Mr Sarkozy said in his concluding remarks broadcast nationwide on the TF1 channel.
“You can’t drag people into the mud because some killers wanted to do it. I can’t let them get away with it.”
Earlier in a statement released to Le Figaro newspaper, Mr Sarkozy said he had been “living the hell of this slander since March 11, 2011”, when the first allegations against him emerged via Gadhafi’s son, Seif al-Islam.
He went as far as to blame “the controversy launched by Gadhafi and his henchmen” for his failure to win re-election in 2012, when Francois Hollande, a Socialist, took the presidency.