Nicolas Sarkozy continues to deny having received money from the Libyan government from Muammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 presidential campaign, but proof to conviction could shake his defense.
Since the Libyan funding trial began, Nicolas Sarkozy has supported the beak and nail that “not a penny” of Libyan money has not been used for his 2007 presidential campaign which propelled him to the Elysée. But after more than a month of audiences, the former President of the Republic was faced with a conviction capable of shaking his defense: the Choukri Ghanem, Prime Minister of Libya Between 2003 and 2006 and Minister Libyan oil from 2006 to 2011.
This notebook in which the politician transcribed scenes and details from his years spent in power was discovered in 2012 after the death, deemed suspicious, of their owner. Choukri Ghanem was found dead floating in the Danube, in Vienna, on April 29, 2012. The writings were then added to other documents published during the revelations of Mediapart on the case of Libyan funding. And if this notebook puts Nicolas Sarkozy in embarrassment, it is because he records several silver payments which actually took place on the dates given to the Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, accused of ‘having played the intermediary between the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi and Nicolas Sarkozy.
A payment of 3 million euros from one of the sons of Muammar Gaddafi, Saïf al-Islam, to candidate Nicolas Sarkozy dated January 2006 is thus in the notebook. Like another payment of 2 million euros from number 2 of the Libyan regime of the time, terrorist Abdallah Senoussi, still for the presidential campaign of French in November 2006. However, one of the representatives The national financial prosecutor’s office insisted during the hearing on Monday, February 10 on “fairly disturbing correspondences between the amounts mentioned in the Choukri Ghanem notebook and Libyan transfers on the Rossfield account”. This account having been opened in November 2005 in Luxembourg by Ziad Takieddine.
The lines of defense of Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy first questioned the authenticity and questioned the veracity of the Choukri Ghanem notebook: “We do not know if it was written on this date or if it is on an old notebook on which he wrote that . Mediapart. A pirouette allowing Nicolas Sarkozy to fall back on his line of defense which consists in saying that the case of Libyan funding is only an invention of the Gaddafi family to take revenge on the military offensive carried out against it and supported by the France in 2011.
But if he called into question the writings of the Libyan carnet, Nicolas Sarkozy clung to a sentence written inside and according to which the money paid by Libyan leaders was “diverted” along the way. “They were fooled,” even added the defendant by speaking of the Libyan government. Here, it is another point of his defense that he tried to strengthen: that according to which Ziad Takieddine has received money from the Libyan government on the Rossfield account, by pretending to be a relative of Nicolas Sarkozy, without the latter receiving money. In this hypothesis, Nicolas Sarkozy presents himself as a collateral damage wrongly accused of having illegally financed his presidential campaign.
The former president has also marked several times the distance from funding for funds on the Rossfield account, arguing that I have no direct link with this bank account: “I have nothing to do with the Rossfield account. I do not am beneficiary of nothing “. No more than with withdrawals made on this account: “Mr. Takieddine has never filed the slightest deposit of cash for me. I have nothing to do directly or indirectly with him. My campaign is at antipodes of these funding “.
Questioned for several hours and put in front of the Libyan notebooks, Nicolas Sarkozy has always held his defense by sometimes having trouble justifying all the elements. To the point of conceding during the hearing: “I know perfectly well that there are serious clues, but they are not concordant.” Several weeks of hearing are still to come to try to shed light on this vast financial business.