Sarkozy denies taking €5m from Gaddafi for campaign

NICOLAS SARKOZY yesterday denied receiving €5 million in cash stuffed into suitcases from deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to fund his election campaign in 2007.

The allegations risked overshadowing the final days of Mr Sarkozy’s campaign to win presidential primaries for the French centre-Right.

Ziad Takieddine, a Franco-Lebanese businessman, claimed in a film that he personally carried three cases of cash in 2006 and early 2007 to the interior ministry and handed them to Mr Sarkozy and his campaign director, Claude Guéant.

The money, he told Mediapart, the investigative website, came from Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi.

Mr Sarkozy has always denied allegations that he took covert funding from Libya. His lawyer, Thierry Herzog, yesterday said he would launch legal proceedings in response to “this crude manipulation”.

The allegations came as François Fillon, Mr Sarkozy’s Thatcherite former-prime minister, made a late surge in the polls in the primary campaign.

The first round of the primary is to be held on Sunday.

Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister, will announce today his candidature for the presidency, a source close to him said, a long-awaited move that could disrupt other campaigns on both the left and the right.

The 38-year-old former investment banker quit his job as economy minister earlier this year.