A crucial trial opens in Paris on Monday, January 6th, for former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, concerning the possible financing of his 2007 presidential campaign by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The affair has been dragging on for almost fourteen years, with rumors and theatrics. Nicolas Sarkozy cries foul—having been convicted for several months now, at first instance and then on appeal, in multiple corruption cases.
The affair began in 2011, even before the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. In March 2011, the first rumor emanating from a Libyan news agency announced that the Libyan regime would soon reveal a “secret likely to jeopardize the political career of the French head of state.” Shortly afterward, Gaddafi’s son Saïf al-Islam made a statement in an interview demanding that Nicolas Sarkozy “return the money to the Libyan people.” Then, Muammar Gaddafi himself, in an interview with Le Figaro, later explained that “it’s thanks to us that he arrived at the presidency, it’s us who provided him with the funds.”
This series of statements from Libya was later supplemented by revelations made by the investigative newspaper Mediapart, which published a “note” written in Arabic in December 2006, in which the former head of Libya’s foreign intelligence services mentioned an “agreement in principle” to “support the electoral campaign of candidate Sarkozy” to the tune of €50 million. At the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was standing for re-election in the 2012 presidential election, lodged a complaint against Mediapart, accusing it of producing a forgery. A lengthy investigation ensued, culminating in Mediapart’s case being dismissed. The author of the note confirmed its contents.
The third episode in the case is based on statements made by a Franco-Lebanese businessman, Ziad Takkiedine, who was interviewed in connection with another case also involving Nicolas Sarkozy, and who also referred to the sum of €50 million allegedly paid by the Libyan regime to the 2007 campaign.
On this basis, the corruption investigation, led by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (Parquet national financier), lasted almost ten years and culminated in 2023 with 13 suspects being brought to trial, including Nicolas Sarkozy and three of his former ministers—Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux, and Éric Woerth.
The “corruption pact”
The magistrates’ work determined that the first contacts were established as early as 2005, when Nicolas Sarkozy was Jacques Chirac’s minister of the interior, and made no secret of his presidential ambitions. A “corruption pact” was allegedly made between Gaddafi and Sarkozy. In exchange for payments, the pact provided for France to work on the dictator’s international rehabilitation: indeed, once elected, Nicolas Sarkozy hastened to invite Gaddafi to Paris in style for the first time in thirty years—which caused a scandal at the time. “Colonel Gaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, whether a terrorist or not, can come and wipe his feet with the blood of his crimes,” declared Rama Yade, even though she was Nicolas Sarkozy’s minister, scandalized by Gaddafi’s arrival in France on Human Rights Day. The signing of lucrative contracts for Libya was also mentioned by the prosecution.
The trial will be a long one, lasting until April. For Transparency International, it could well be “the biggest corruption trial of the early 21st century.” Sarkozy is being prosecuted for corruption, concealment of misappropriation of public funds, illegal campaign financing, and criminal conspiracy. He faces ten years’ imprisonment, a fine of €375,000, and deprivation of civic rights for up to five years.
Sticking to the story
The defense denies all allegations, denouncing them as a “fable” and a “machination.” “President Nicolas Sarkozy is looking forward to these four months of hearings with determination. He will fight the artificial construction imagined by the prosecution. There was no Libyan financing of the campaign,” maintains one of his lawyers, who also rejects any form of compensation and speaks of a “wild theory” supported by no serious evidence, designed solely to “harm” his client. In Sarkozy’s favor is the lack of credibility of one of the main informants in the affair, Ziad Takkiedine, who has given no fewer than sixteen different versions of the facts.
The civil parties, on the other hand, emphasize the seriousness of a ten-year investigation. For the Sherpa association, whose aim is to defend citizens against “economic crimes”, the Libyan affair is extremely serious and has far-reaching implications for French political life. “You have the coming together of a certain number of elements: both the facts of an attack on probity, which therefore concern us collectively, concern the general interest, and also this dimension inherent in the fact that we are talking about the financing of a presidential campaign—therefore for the most important election within the country—via a foreign power,” the association’s lawyer explained to RFI. He believes that France today continues to pay the price for this affair, having “mortgaged its sovereignty.” The outbreak of the Libyan war with French support is also, for some, directly linked to this corruption affair: Nicolas Sarkozy is said to have tried to redeem his conscience by supporting the insurrection against Gaddafi to make people forget the questionable arrangements from which he had profited, with heavy international geopolitical consequences. In 2016, the British Parliament concluded that Sarkozy’s involvement in Libya was self-serving for domestic political reasons.
The former president is in turmoil. For several months, his relationship with President Macron has deteriorated, as if the current head of state were trying to distance himself from a person mired in legal troubles. Sarkozy can no longer boast of being his privileged adviser. On Libya, Macron has for several years been sceptical about France’s role in 2011. Sarkozy’s trial can only reinforce Macron’s attitude and intention to build a solid barrier between himself and his predecessor.
Three weeks ago, Sarkozy was definitively sentenced on appeal for corruption to one year in prison in a wiretapping case, a sentence he must serve with an electronic bracelet. As a result, he no longer appears in court with a clean criminal record, which is a first for a former president. Sarkozy could also be the first head of state since Marshal Pétain to have his Légion d’honneur order of merit withdrawn.
