Libyan financing: a relative of Sarkozy would have received 440,000 euros in 2006, according to Mediapart

Paris (AFP)

A former collaborator of Nicolas Sarkozy would have touched in 2006 a transfer of 440,000 euros from the Libyan regime of Gaddafi and having passed through an account belonging to the intermediary Ziad Takieddine, said Sunday Mediapart.

According to the online media, Thierry Gaubert received this sum on February 8, 2006 in an account opened in the Bahamas by a transfer from Rossfield, which would be the property of Mr. Takieddine. The money would then have been transferred the next day to an unidentified account.

But Rossfield would have been "fed only by money from the regime of Gaddafi", according to the newspaper, up to six million euros in 2006: three million in January, a few days before the transfer mentioned Sunday, a other in May and last two in November.

Contacted Sunday by AFP, Thierry Gaubert and Ziad Takieddine had not reacted immediately.

Quoted by Mediapart, Gaubert said that "Rossfield is not Mr. Takieddine at all" and that it is "not at all Libyan money".

After six years of work by examining magistrates, a number of disturbing clues gave substance to the thesis of a financing of the presidential campaign victorious Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 by the regime of Gaddafi.

In November 2016, Ziad Takieddine, indicted, had claimed to have handed between five million euros between late 2006 and early 2007 Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, and his chief of staff Claude Gueant.

But no material evidence has been found, although suspicious fund movements have led to eight indictments to date.

The former head of state has been indicted since 21 March 2018 for "passive bribery, illegal financing of election campaigns and concealment of embezzlement of Libyan public funds".

With several relatives, he challenges the validity of this judicial investigation. The examination of their queries in nullity must take place on March 19th in front of the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal.

Mr. Gaubert, who has worked with Nicolas Sarkozy in Bercy, must also appear from Monday before the Paris Criminal Court for "tax fraud" and "laundering tax fraud". He is, among others, suspected of having placed assets on accounts abroad without declaring them to the French tax authorities.

© 2019 AFP