Former President Nicolas Sarkozy is summoned by a Parisian judge for an indictment in the investigation into the retraction through Ziad Takieddine of his accusations of Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign, AFP learned on Wednesday from sources. close to the file, confirming Release.
According to two of these sources, the interrogation initially scheduled for these days has been postponed and should be held in October, as RTL and M6 wrote. The former head of state, who firmly denies any participation in the incriminating facts, is suspected of having knowingly benefited from the maneuvers undertaken by several protagonists to exonerate him.
Eight suspected protagonists
Depending on the content of his statements before the examining magistrate and the latter’s assessment of them, Nicolas Sarkozy could emerge from this questioning under investigation or under the less incriminating status of assisted witness, which gives him full access to the file. excluding a lawsuit concerning him. Justice suspects at least eight protagonists of having participated, with the possible endorsement of the former head of state, in an operation so that the sulphurous Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine withdraws his accusations at the end of 2020, against remuneration. against Nicolas Sarkozy.
This operation would also have aimed to obtain proof that the resounding “Libyan document”, published between the two rounds of the 2012 presidential election by Mediapart and evoking funding of up to 50 million euros, was a forgery, or still to obtain the release of a Gaddafi son, detained in Lebanon, so that the family of the late Libyan dictator facilitates the exoneration of Nicolas Sarkozy. The queen of the paparazzi Mimi Marchand is among the defendants.
Facts of “concealment of witness tampering”
At the beginning of March, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office extended the judicial investigation opened in the spring of 2021 to facts of “concealment of witness tampering”, a qualification which could correspond to the role attributed to Nicolas Sarkozy as it appears in certain statements by the protagonists in investigation. At the origin of this investigation, the spectacular volte-face of Ziad Takieddine, who accused Nicolas Sarkozy since 2012 of having benefited from Libyan funds for his 2007 presidential campaign, and who had declared in November 2020 on BFMTV and Paris Match that Nicolas Sarkozy had in fact not received funding from Muammar Gaddafi.
He went back on his remarks two months later. Investigators have recently estimated at least 608,000 euros the amount of the alleged operation intended to obtain the withdrawal of the charges of Ziad Takieddine.