The risk of a new trial for Nicolas Sarkozy is becoming clearer. The National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) requested, Wednesday (May 10th), his referral – along with 12 other suspects – to the criminal court in connection with the case of suspicions of Libyan financing of the 2007 presidential campaign, he announced Thursday.

According to a source close to the case, confirmed by the PNF, a trial is requested for the former head of state (2007-2012) for passive corruption, criminal association, illegal financing of electoral campaigns and concealment of Libyan public funds.

Nicolas Sarkozy has always disputed the facts. His defense was not immediately reachable.

It is now up to the two investigating judges in charge of this sprawling case, opened since April 2013, to order or not a trial before the Paris Criminal Court and, if so, for what offenses.

Thirteen people have been indicted during the ten years of investigations conducted by the Anti-Corruption Office (OCLCIFF) under the aegis of financial magistrates.

Trial also required for Claude Guéant, Éric Woerth and Brice Hortefeux

The offence of criminal association suggests that Nicolas Sarkozy knowingly let his close collaborators, his political supporters and intermediaries "act in order to obtain or attempt to obtain" from the regime of Muammar Gaddafi "financial support for the financing of his 2007 electoral campaign", to the tune of several million euros.

Among the twelve other people for whom the PNF is asking for a trial are Claude Guéant, former right-hand man of the head of state and former minister, Eric Woerth, treasurer of the 2007 presidential campaign, and Brice Hortefeux, Nicolas Sarkozy's confidant and former minister.

"On the 429 pages of the indictment, I observe that the indictment of Mr. Guéant is not based on the slightest evidence, the slightest serious testimony or the slightest concordance of clues," responded to AFP Me Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi, lawyer of Claude Guéant.

Two businessmen, the Franco-Lebanese Ziad Takieddine and the Franco-Algerian Alexandre Djouhri, suspected of having served as intermediaries, are also among the accused.

The magistrates have gathered a sum of disturbing clues

A judicial investigation was opened in April 2013 after accusations by Libyan dignitaries, Ziad Takieddine and the publication by Mediapart, between the two rounds of the 2012 presidential election, of a document supposed to prove that this campaign had benefited from Libyan funds.

Testimonies, notes from the Tripoli secret services, accusations of an intermediary, suspicious movements of funds... The magistrates gathered a sum of disturbing clues that gave substance to the thesis according to which the campaign of the former president or his entourage would have benefited from Libyan funds.

But the Sarkozy camp has been contesting this from the beginning and has multiplied the appeals, in vain, to obtain the cancellation of the prosecution. "You have neither proof of arrival nor proof of exit regarding money ... Where is the money?" defended the former head of state during an interrogation at the end of 2020. "I don't know if these millions or billions of Gaddafi existed, I don't know anything about them but as treasurer of the campaign, I never saw them," Eric Woerth said in the media in 2017.

"This indictment is the result of a fine and surgical analysis, at the height of the stakes of this procedure and the personalities it implicates," said Vincent Brengarth, lawyer for the Sherpa association. "It paves the way for a trial that everyone guesses will be historic."

The main case, closed in October 2022, was enriched in 2021 with a section on a possible attempt to bribe Ziad Takieddine, who temporarily withdrew his accusations against Nicolas Sarkozy at the end of 2020. Another aspect concerns an attempt to bribe Lebanese magistrates to obtain the release of Hannibal Gaddafi, son of Muammar Gaddafi imprisoned in Lebanon.

Nicolas Sarkozy will also know Thursday, May 17 the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal in the case of "wiretapping", which earned him a sentence at first instance to three years in prison – including one year – for corruption and influence peddling. He will also be retried from next November on appeal in the Bygmalion case, which earned him one year in prison at first instance.

With AFP

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