Sarkozy tried for criminal conspiracy tied to Qaddafi cash

Gaspard Sebag, Bloomberg News on Jan 6, 2025

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Ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy is at the center of a trial over allegations his 2007 winning campaign was covertly funded by about €5 million ($5.2 million) in cash and offshore transfers paid by aides to Libya’s late leader, Moammar Qaddafi.

Sarkozy is accused at a Paris trial starting Monday of taking part in a criminal conspiracy to use money embezzled from Libya. Investigators also suspect him of corruption and accuse him of favoring the interests of Qaddafi’s regime in exchange for money, before and after he became France’s head of state. He denies any wrongdoing.

After scaling the heights of French politics to win the presidency in 2007, Sarkozy has battled a variety of accusations since his failed 2012 re-election bid. This latest trial is the third separate criminal case that has brought him to court and comes after the 69-year-old lost in December a final appeal to overturn a historic corruption conviction.

In the Libya case, the prosecution points to Sarkozy’s role in improving the international standing of Qaddafi, who was invited to France for an official state visit just months after the Frenchman’s presidential win.

Sarkozy is accused of letting two top aides work with intermediaries to establish secret links with Qaddafi lieutenants and set up transfers of Libyan funds to France via offshore accounts and cash transfers.

The Paris trial is scheduled to last until April, with a ruling expected several months later.

During the hearings, Sarkozy “will fight the artificial construction imagined by the prosecution,” his lawyer Christophe Ingrain said ahead of the trial. “there is no Libyan funding of the campaign,” added Ingrain.

Jean-François Bohnert, who heads France’s Parquet National Financier, said in a BFM TV interview on Monday that prosecutors amassed thousands of pages of testimony, financial transfers and further documentary evidence that show a “corruption pact” between Sarkozy’s campaign and Qaddafi’s regime.