The magistrates’ decision was taken after a total of thirty hours of interrogation over three and a half days. Former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy was doubly indicted this Friday, October 6, in the investigation into fraudulent maneuvers to exonerate him from suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, AFP has learned from judicial sources.
The former President of the Republic (2007-2012), who arrived by car around 9:40 a.m. at the Paris judicial court, was indicted for concealment of witness tampering and criminal association with a view to preparing trial fraud in organized gang, a judicial source told AFP, as part of the investigation into the retraction of intermediary Ziad Takieddine.
This decision opens the way to a possible new trial for the leading figure of the French right. It was taken by two financial magistrates responsible for this judicial investigation opened in May 2021 on this operation, called “Saving Sarkozy” by one of the defendants.
“Nicolas Sarkozy is firmly determined to assert his rights, establish the truth and defend his honor,” reacted the former president’s lawyers, Jean-Michel Darrois and Christophe Ingrain, in a press release sent to AFP
Operation “Save Sarkozy”
Justice is interested in the maneuvers which would have been developed by at least nine protagonists, involved to varying degrees and times: the queen of the paparazzi Mimi Marchand, the intermediary Noël Dubus, already convicted of fraud, the late financier Pierre Reynaud, the powerful business leader David Layani, etc.
Their objective would have first been to obtain the retraction of the accusations of the sulfurous Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine against Nicolas Sarkozy, at the end of 2020 in exchange for possible remuneration. This turnaround gave rise to a resounding interview on BFMTV and Paris Match, starting point of the investigation. Then, in the first half of 2021, some of them would have tried to obtain proof that the resounding Libyan document published between the two rounds of the 2012 presidential election by Mediapart and mentioning financing to the tune of 50 million euros was a fake. Or even to bribe Lebanese magistrates so that they would release a Gaddafi son detained in this country, so that the family of the late Libyan dictator would facilitate the exoneration of Nicolas Sarkozy.
For investigators, according to recently established figures, at least 608,000 euros could have been used in this operation, the fraudulent content of which the protagonists dispute.