The hearing of magistrate Gilbert Azibert in the Paul Bismuth case was interrupted Wednesday because the lawyers failed to come to grips.

She resumed Thursday in order to understand the role of Gilbert Azibert in obtaining information covered by secrecy by Nicolas Sarkozy and lawyer Thierry Herzog.

At 73 and although breathless, Gilbert Azibert, tried alongside Nicolas Sarkozy for corruption, strongly refuted Wednesday to have influenced an appeal by the former president in the Bettencourt affair in exchange for a "boost "for a post in Monaco.

After forty years of career in the judiciary, the accusations are difficult to live for the one who is accused of having sought to obtain information covered by secrecy for his friend, the lawyer Thierry Herzog.

The questioning of Gilbert Azibert was abruptly suspended at the end of the day, because the lawyers failed to come to grips, and resumes this Thursday, December 3.

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Azibert refutes his involvement

"I am criticized for having contacted I do not know who to obtain I do not know what. (...) But all that is exculpatory, we do not talk about it", regretted Gilbert Azibert at the bar, veiling hardly his anger against the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF).

He thus denounced "unbearable accusations" against him.

Gilbert Azibert was subjected to reading of telephone conversations held on the "Paul Bismuth" line.

Thierry Herzog and Nicolas Sarkozy say there that he "worked well", "from the inside".

The former high magistrate did not dismantle: he assures that he never made the remarks that are attributed to him, and supposes that Thierry Herzog simply wanted to reassure his client.

A judgment of the Bordeaux investigation chamber on the presidential agendas had however been found in search of his home, transmitted by the lawyer Herzog while he was covered by secrecy.

Here again, Gilbert Azibert defends himself: "I did not hide that it was he (Thierry Herzog) who gave it to me".

After an unsuccessful email, he even went to pick it up in Me Herzog's office.

"I did not ask myself the question (of secrecy). For me, it is a working document that we found at home like others that we did not want to see."

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A "purely legal" interest

According to him, his interest in the Bettencourt affair in which Nicolas Sarkozy was immersed was "purely legal".

Since the start of the investigation, for 6 and a half years, lawyers and the National Financial Prosecutor's Office have been engaged in a procedural battle.

The tension was therefore strong and the tone still rose during the PNF's questions, with Gilbert Azibert but also with the defense lawyers who rose up against a question considered more than awkward.