Questioned at the trial of the Bygmalion case in the Paris court on Tuesday, June 15, Nicolas Sarkozy denied any "intention of fraud" or any "negligence" in the financing of his campaign for the 2012 presidential election.
The former president has refuted any knowledge of a fraudulent arrangement to finance this campaign for some 42.8 million euros, almost double the authorized ceiling.
The ex-president is being prosecuted for "illegal financing of the electoral campaign", punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 3,750 euros, alongside 13 other defendants - former executives of Bygmalion and the UMP, experts - accountants - prosecuted for "forgery", "use of forgery", "breach of trust" or "fraud", offenses punishable by three to five years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros.
"Where is the lavish countryside, the solid gold countryside?"
Big absent from the debates since the opening of the trial on May 20, Nicolas Sarkozy, black mask and midnight blue suit, defended himself from having taken any part in the system of false invoices with forceful gestures and arguments, sometimes leaving in digressions on his political life.
"Do I have an intention of fraud, an intention to traffic? (...) I answer the most formal no to all that", he declared to the president, Caroline Viguier, who l 'asked.
"Was there a single moment when I ignored a single one of their warning or their advice? No", he hammered, referring to the ex-leaders of the UMP, the managers of the communication agency Bygmalion and its campaign team.
"Me, from the moment it worked and when everyone told me that it was okay, I had no reason to worry about it more than that", he pleaded.
Explanations in reverse of the hearings of Jean-François Copé, ex-secretary general of the UMP, and his then chief of staff, Jérôme Lavrilleux, who mentioned, without naming him, "a candidate" decision-maker and in fact of "the value of things".
"Where is the campaign that is racing, the sumptuous campaign, the campaign in solid gold? Let me be told how my campaign was different from that of Mr. Holland and that of Madame Le Pen", notably underlined the former president on the campaign which culminated in his defeat to socialist François Hollande in May 2012.
>> To read: Bygmalion, the other case which pursues Nicolas Sarkozy
01:53
"Illegal campaign financing"
The real price of some 40 meetings organized by the event agency Bygmalion had been drastically reduced, and the rest - 80% of the bills - paid by the UMP (now LR), in the name of fictitious party conventions.
Contrary to the other defendants, returned in particular for fraud or use of forgery, Nicolas Sarkozy is not implicated for this system, and appears for "illegal financing of campaign" only.
In March, he became the first ex-president of the Fifth Republic to be sentenced to prison (three years, one of which was closed), for corruption and influence peddling in the so-called "wiretapping" affair.
In the Bygmalion file, "the investigation has not established" according to the accusation that Nicolas Sarkozy could "order", "participate", or even be informed of the system.
But the president-candidate, far from being "disconnected from his campaign", made the choice with his team of "spectacular and expensive meetings", and asked to accelerate the pace - up to one meeting per day.
A campaign "of rare density", marked by a "total improvisation" of the ordering parties, had described the accusation.
"It has to fart"
For the organizers, an instruction: "It must fart", summed up at the start of the trial the head of meetings at Bygmalion, Franck Attal.
The prosecution believes that Nicolas Sarkozy let spending slip, despite several clear alerts on the risk of overruns, and thus "undoubtedly" benefited from fraud, which allowed him to have "means much greater" than authorized the law: at least 42.8 million euros in total, almost double the legal ceiling at the time.
To avoid having to publicly admit that his spending had drifted "dramatically", "with the political and financial consequences" that would have followed, says the prosecution, it was decided to "purge" the campaign account. .
A thesis in which Nicolas Sarkozy does not believe: the price of his meetings was "perfectly in line" with those of his opponent François Hollande, he told investigators.
So, "where did this money go?"
The former secretary general of the UMP Jean-François Cope, cleared in this case and heard as a simple witness last week, has an idea.
"You always have to ask who benefits," he replied to the court when asked about his "hypothesis" on the question of the trial: who ordered the fraud?
"Decisions were taken at the Élysée"
The sarkozysts and copéistes have always rejected the responsibility for this scandal which caused serial explosions on the right.
When the case was revealed in the press in 2014, Jean-François Cope was first accused of being behind a system created to constitute a "slush fund" dedicated to his political future.
Jérôme Lavrilleux, at the time chief of staff of Jean-François Copé and deputy director of the campaign, and only in the UMP to have recognized the fraud, ensures that neither his boss, nor Nicolas Sarkozy, had been put aware.
The other former executives of the UMP and the campaign, for their part, avoided talking about the former head of state.
"Decisions were taken at the Elysee Palace", we have heard at most.
On the sidelines of the interrogation of campaign director Guillaume Lambert last week, a defense lawyer was surprised: "Is someone going to ask a question about Sarkozy at some point?"
The trial is scheduled until June 22.
With Reuters and AFP
The summary of the week
France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 application
google-play-badge_FR