Like any other litigant, Nicolas Sarkozy was able to defend himself on television from the accusations of corruption weighing on him.

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Valery Hache / AP / SIPA

Nicolas Sarkozy counterattacked Friday by saying his "anger" at having been "dragged in the mud", during an interview with BFMTV given two days after the surprise withdrawal of accusations on an alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 campaign "I am torn between a cold anger, the depth and strength of which you cannot imagine", and "amazement", said the former president.

"It is serious, not just for me […] but for France, which gives the feeling that its former head of state could be corrupt, it is an ignominy", he added.

In this case "there is not the shadow of a transfer, not the shadow of a payment," he hammered.

In November 2016, while Nicolas Sarkozy was running for the right's inauguration for the presidential election, Ziad Takieddine, a sulphurous intermediary and one of the main prosecution witnesses, claimed to have conveyed between November 2006 and early 2007 "a total of five million euros ”in suitcases on three trips between Tripoli and Paris.

On Wednesday, he withdrew his accusations, in a video unveiled by BFMTV and Paris Match (owned by the Lagardère group where Nicolas Sarkozy is a member of the supervisory board).

The PNF maintains his accusations

"Is it normal that a former President of the Republic is dragged through the mud as I have been for eight years, on the sole statements of an individual who lied?"

Asked Nicolas Sarkozy.

However, the national financial prosecutor said Thursday that the charges against Sarkozy "are not limited to statements" by Takieddine and are based "on serious or concordant evidence".

"This file is riddled with falsehoods", replied Nicolas Sarkozy, indicted on October 12 for "criminal association" in this file, refuting point by point the arguments against him.

"I said to the judges: search for a century […] you will not find anything," he stressed.

Facing justice in ten days

Immediately after the interview with Ziad Takieddine, Nicolas Sarkozy had asked his lawyer to "file a request for" dismissal "in examination" by assuring him: "the truth is out".

"I am not a rotten, and what is inflicted on me is a scandal which will end in the annals", affirmed Friday Sarkozy, who will be judged from November 23 in another case, that of the "tapping".

In this case, "I am not optimistic, simply combative, I do not intend to be reproached for things that I did not commit", he assured.

"I love my country" and "all I have done in my life is to be loved by the French," he assured, affirming once again that he did not have the intention to return to politics.

"I have turned the page" and "I am very happy like that", he said, while speculations are still rife on the right on the hypothesis of a return, in the event of a serious crisis in the country.

Finally, he called for "thinking about the question of a moratorium" on immigration, the law of which must, according to him, be "in depth".

Justice

Suspicions of Libyan financing: Claude Guéant denies new statements by Ziad Takieddine

Politics

Suspicions of Libyan funding: The chronology of Ziad Takieddine's contradictory statements

  • Justice

  • Corruption

  • Libya

  • Nicolas sarkozy

  • Society