The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy will go on trial on Monday over the biggest political financing scandal in modern French history, in which he is alleged to have received millions of euros in illegal election campaign funding from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.<\/p>\n
The historic trial of the rightwing former French president and 12 other people \u2013 including three former government ministers \u2013 for criminal conspiracy to receive funds from a foreign dictator on a massive scale threatens to worsen voters\u2019 already low trust in the French political class.<\/p>\n
After a 10-year anti-corruption investigation, the court will hear allegations of what investigative magistrates called a \u201ccorruption pact\u201d forged between Sarkozy and the Libyan regime in which intermediaries delivered suitcases full of cash to ministry buildings in Paris to illegally fund Sarkozy\u2019s victorious 2007 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
The court will examine whether, in exchange for funding Sarkozy\u2019s presidential campaign, the Libyan regime requested diplomatic, legal and business favours.<\/p>\n
One of these alleged requests for favours related to Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi\u2019s spy chief and enforcer. Senussi had been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a French court in 1999 for his role in the 1989 bombing of a UTA passenger plane over Niger which killed 170 people. The court will hear how requests were allegedly made by the Libyan regime to Sarkozy\u2019s entourage to find a way to lift France\u2019s international arrest warrant against Senussi<\/p>\n
Laure Heinich, a lawyer for 15 relatives of people killed in the UTA plane bombing, said her clients would tell the court of their shock to hear that \u201cthe arrest of the person who killed their family members\u201d could be \u201cexchanged for money\u201d. She said the alleged corruption pact would mean that \u201cthe money Nicolas Sarkozy used to get elected in 2007 was money sullied by these families\u2019 blood\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sarkozy, who was president between 2007 and 2012, has denied all wrongdoing in the case.<\/p>\n
The three-month trial will unpick Sarkozy\u2019s complex relationship with Gaddafi, the autocratic Libyan leader whose brutal 41-year rule was marked by human rights abuses and who had been isolated internationally over his regime\u2019s connection to terrorism, including the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in Dec 1988.<\/p>\n
Members of Sarkozy\u2019s entourage allegedly met members of Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2005, when Sarkozy was interior minister. Soon after becoming French president in 2007, Sarkozy then invited the Libyan leader for a lengthy state visit to Paris, setting up his Bedouin tent in gardens near the \u00c9lys\u00e9e. Sarkozy was the first western leader to welcome Gaddafi on a full state visit since the freeze in relations in the 1980s over his pariah status as a sponsor of state terrorism.<\/p>\n
But in 2011, Sarkozy put France in the forefront of Nato-led airstrikes against Gaddafi\u2019s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime. Gaddafi was captured by rebels in October 2011 and killed.<\/p>\n
A documentary about the case, Personne N\u2019y Comprend Rien (No One Understands), will be released in French cinemas on Wednesday telling the story of the investigation.<\/p>\n
If convicted on corruption charges, Sarkozy could face up to 10 years in prison alongside Claude Gu\u00e9ant, a former \u00c9lys\u00e9e secretary general and interior minister, and Brice Hortefeux, a close Sarkozy ally who also served as interior minister. All deny wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Also on trial is Sarkozy\u2019s former budget minister \u00c9ric Woerth, who is now an MP for Emmanuel Macron\u2019s centrist party. He denies wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
In March 2011, Gaddafi\u2019s son Saif al-Islam told Euronews: \u201cSarkozy has to give back the money he accepted from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We financed his campaign and we have the proof \u2026 The first thing we\u2019re demanding is that this clown gives back the money to the Libyan people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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