Two new witnesses will be heard by the court about the document published in 2012 by Mediapart and supposed to prove a Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, one learned Sunday from judicial source.
The Mediapart document in question
If new elements were to appear, it would then be up to the public prosecutor to request the reopening of the judicial inquiry initiated after a complaint by the former head of state against the online media. In this case, the Court of Cassation had finally validated in January the dismissal ordered twice in favor of Mediapart, who was accused of producing a forgery.
This document, bearing the date of December 10, 2006 and addressed to the former treasurer of the Libyan regime of Gaddafi, Bechir Saleh, was published on April 28, 2012, between the two rounds of the presidential election. Attributed to Moussa Koussa, former head of foreign intelligence services in Libya, now in exile, he claimed that Tripoli had agreed to finance for "50 million euros" the campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.
The investigation for forgery was particularly concerned with determining whether or not the document was a forgery from a material point of view (form, signature). "Regardless of its content", the investigation could not establish "formally" that it was "a support manufactured by assembly" or "altered by falsifications", said the magistrates instructors in their prescription in May 2016.
The request of Nicolas Sarkozy's lawyer accepted
In July, the Journal du Dimanche published the testimony of El-Mahfoud Ladib, a man presented as a former collaborator of Ziad Takieddine, who claimed that the Franco-Lebanese businessman held, before its publication by Mediapart, the controversial note. Ziad Takieddine had assured that he did not know this man.
Nicolas Sarkozy's lawyer, Me Thierry Herzog, then asked the Paris public prosecutor to hear the witness, as well as that of Yves Omnes, a French financier who said he could testify that the French businessman Lebanese and El-Mahfoud Ladib know each other. The Paris prosecutor has accepted this request and these two witnesses will therefore be heard, according to the judicial source, confirming information from the JDD .
Open since 2013, a separate investigation is still under way to verify the Libyan financing charges, made by Ziad Takieddine and former Libyan dignitaries, while others have denied them. In this part, the former Minister and Secretary General of the Elysee Claude Gueant and Nicolas Sarkozy have been indicted for "passive bribery" and "concealment of embezzlement of public funds".