Paris (AFP)
A former head of state tried for corruption: Nicolas Sarkozy appears from Monday in Paris in the case of "eavesdropping" alongside his lawyer Thierry Herzog and the former high magistrate Gilbert Azibert, in a trial unprecedented under the Fifth Republic.
Before him, only one former president, Jacques Chirac, was tried - and convicted in 2011 - for the fictitious jobs of the City of Paris but he never appeared before his judges because of his state of health.
Denouncing a "scandal which will go down in the annals", Nicolas Sarkozy, 65, promises to be "combative" before the Paris Criminal Court and claims not to be "rotten".
The trial, which is due to open at 1:30 p.m. and last until December 10, remains subject to the vagaries of the Covid-19 epidemic and could be postponed at the request of Gilbert Azibert, 73, for medical reasons.
The "eavesdropping" affair, also called the "Bismuth" affair, has its origins in another legal file which threatens Nicolas Sarkozy: the suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign which earned him a quadruple indictment.
In this case, the judges had decided in September 2013 to place the former president on tapping and discovered, in early 2014, that he was using a secret line, under the alias "Paul Bismuth", to communicate with Thierry Herzog.
According to the prosecution, some of their conversations revealed the existence of a corruption pact: Nicolas Sarkozy, through his lawyer, considered bringing a "boost" to Mr. Azibert for a post in Monaco that he coveted - and that he never got.
In return, this high magistrate provided information covered by secrecy on a procedure initiated by the former head of state before the Court of Cassation on the sidelines of the Bettencourt case.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who had benefited from a dismissal in this case at the end of 2013, had thus seized the high court to cancel the seizure of his presidential agendas, likely to interest the justice in other procedures.
- "I will help him" -
In flowery conversations with his lawyer, the basis of the accusation, the former president undertook to intervene in favor of Gilbert Azibert.
"Me, I make him go up", "I will help him", he said thus to Me Herzog.
A few days later, he declares that he has given up any "approach" to the Monegasque authorities.
For investigators, the sudden turnaround could come from the discovery by the two men that their unofficial phones were tapped.
In a severe indictment in October 2017, the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) compared the methods of Nicolas Sarkozy to those of "a seasoned delinquent".
Withdrawn from politics since his defeat in the right-wing primary at the end of 2016 but still very influential at LR, he faces ten years in prison and a million euros fine for corruption and influence peddling, like his co-defendants - judged in addition for violation of professional secrecy.
The three defendants, whose lawyers did not wish to speak before the trial, contest any "corruption pact".
"Mr. Azibert did not get anything, I did not take any action and I was dismissed by the Court of Cassation" concerning the agendas, supported the former president in 2014. "I will explain myself in court because I have always faced my obligations, "he said Friday on BFMTV.
Nicolas Sarkozy has continued to denounce a political instrumentalisation of justice and has, without success, multiplied the appeals on the grounds that the transcription of exchanges between a lawyer and his client would be illegal.
The Court of Cassation ruled him wrong in March 2016 but this question will again be fiercely discussed from the start of the trial.
A contested investigation by the PNF also risks igniting the debates: closed in 2019 almost six years after its opening, it aimed to identify a possible "mole" who would have informed MM.
Sarkozy and Herzog that their "Bismuth" line was "connected".
In this context, the magistrates had the telephone records ("fadettes") of the tenors of the bar, several of whom will ensure the defense of the defendants at trial.
Another trial awaits Nicolas Sarkozy in the spring: that of the Bygmalion affair on his campaign costs for the 2012 presidential election.
© 2020 AFP