Paris (AFP)

"You lie all the time": Barely a hour ago businessman Ziad Takieddine was at the helm when the president cracked. At the trial of the financial side of the sprawling Karachi case, the intermediary began Thursday to deliver the umpteenth story of his "truth".

Alternately indignant and enveloping, he is angry with the president of the 11th Criminal Court of Paris, Christine Mée, who places him in front of his "contradictions", before finding "formidable" when it points to an aspect that the interested.

Key figure in this issue, the French-Lebanese is judged alongside three politicians, an industrialist and a second intermediary absent for suspicion of kickbacks on the sidelines of Edouard Balladur's unfortunate presidential campaign in 1995.

The prosecution claims that the bribes, then legal, paid to middlemen on arms deals with Saudi Arabia (Sawari II) and Pakistan (Agosta) gave rise to illegal retrocommissions that fueled the Mr. Balladur's campaign accounts.

This second network of intermediaries, known as "K network" (for King, in reference to the Saudi king), which included Ziad Takieddine and his co-defendant Abdul Rahman Al Assir, was promised the payment of more than 300 million euros on various contracts, affected more than 85, until the end of the payment of commissions, decided by Jacques Chirac after his election to the presidency.

For the first time at the helm, 69-year-old Ziad Takieddine credits himself with the beneficial role of an almost disinterested shadow man, a "facilitator" of Franco-Saudi relations.

"I'm not in a network that's called K. It's an invention," he begins.

"The usefulness of the network, we can talk about it, but we see that when commissions are paid, there is a key distribution (between Al Assir and Takieddine, ed) and sums are coming back to you.These are facts", intervenes, annoyed, the president.

- "Legion of Honor" -

He claims, with a wealth of useless detail, that if he gets money, it is because of his work as a facilitator, and in no way as a member of a network, and that he has nothing to do with the offshore companies on whose accounts the commissions arrived.

"You're going to sit down, we're going to take everything in. The companies, the payments, we're going to spend hours, you're lying all the time!" Exclaims placid Christine Mée.

Tolled in the ranks of the defense on the lack of "impartiality of the court". Ziad Takieddine, wounded in his honor, protests vigorously. The president recalls: "I rectify: you have very changing and evolving statements".

In fact, the hearing is the scene of a new flip-flop, in light of the statements of the sulfurous businessmen in June 2013 to the investigating judges.

At the time, as the President recalled, he had admitted to being a negotiator in the Agosta contract with Pakistan, to be a partner of Mr Al Assir for the Saudi contracts. Above all, he was the only one of the defendants to acknowledge having participated in political financing, for having handed large sums of money in cash to his friend Thierry Gaubert, engaged in the Balladur campaign, at the request of Nicolas Bazire, then director of campaign - what the people have always refuted.

He returned to his previous position on Thursday, saying that he had made the Balladur government (1993-95) benefit from his lights - because "most French people do not understand the Arab world" - and have been paid for his advice by a prince Saudi, through Mr. Al Assir.

For this role of mediator, peacemaker and lucrative contracts, he believes it "just deserves a legion of honor".

Weary of war, the president asks him about the stop of the commissions. "You are terrific! You have touched the essential point," he exclaims, before telling how he convinced former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri to pay the remainder of Saudi commissions to avoid a serious diplomatic crisis. between Paris and Ryad.

The president has heard enough. She suspended the debate, reserving the question of political financing at Monday's hearing.

© 2019 AFP