Sarkozy on trial: Campaigns, Gaddafi and suitcases full of cash

Financial prosecutors in France have accused former president Nicolas Sarkozy of brokering a 2005 deal with Gaddafi to fund his first – and ultimately successful – presidential bid.

In exchange, then finance minister Sarkozy is suspected of agreeing to help rehabilitate the Gaddafi regime, which at the time remained internationally isolated as a pariah state.

The former president is accused of accepting some €50 million in cash from Gaddafi, more than double the legal campaign funding limit of €21 million at the time. France has strict caps on what candidates can spend on a political campaign and only contributions from French citizens or residents of France can be accepted.

Sarkozy, 69, is charged with illegal campaign financing, embezzlement, corruption and other crimes. If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison and €375,000 ($386,000) in fines.

Troubles begin

The allegations first came to light in March 2011, when a Libyan news agency reported that Gaddafi's government helped finance the Sarkozy campaign. “It’s thanks to us that he reached the presidency,” Gaddafi said in an interview. “We provided him with the funds that allowed him to win.”

The revelations came shortly before Gaddafi was overthrown, bringing an end to his four decades at the helm of a regime accused of widespread human rights abuses.

But the suspicions of Sarkozy’s wrongdoing really picked up speed in 2012, when French investigative website Mediapart claimed it had a note from Libyan intelligence services dated December 2006 and mentioning Gaddafi’s efforts to fund the Sarkozy campaign. Sarkozy has claimed the document was fake.

In 2007, then president Sarkozy welcomed Gaddafi for a state visit to Paris, allowing him to pitch his heated Bedouin tent in the gardens of the mansion used for honoured guests next to the Élysée Palace.

French authorities launched an investigation into the funding allegations in 2013. But more revelations were to come.

In a 2016 interview with Mediapart and the Premières Lignes news agency, Franco-Lebanese arms dealer Ziad Takieddine described how, in late 2006 and early 2007, he “personally handed three suitcases containing a total of €5 million from the Libyan regime to the then French interior minister Sarkozy and his chief of staff Claude Guéant”. On two occasions he delivered to cash to Guéant. “[T]hen on a third occasion in January 2007 he gave a suitcase to Nicolas Sarkozy in person” at Sarkozy’s apartment. 

Takieddine said the suitcases were given to him by the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, who was also Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, and that neither Sarkozy nor Guéant opened the suitcases in his presence.   

He also said he gave a written deposition to French judges detailing these cash handovers in November 2016.

Former intelligence chief Senussi confirmed that Sarkozy’s campaign had received millions from the Gaddafi regime in statements to French investigative judges. Senoussi is now imprisoned in Libya on war crimes charges.

Web of intrigue

A dozen people are facing trial in the case, including Guéant, former French interior minister Brice Hortefeux and Sarkozy’s head of campaign financing Eric Woerth. All three were present in court on Monday.

French investigators sent cooperation requests to more than 21 other countries to track the funding through a host of middlemen and different companies. 

Investigators looked into the numerous trips to Libya made by Sarkozy’s entourage between 2005 and 2007. They also noted dozens of meetings Guéant had with Takieddine, who is a key player in French military contracts abroad.

Other defendants include two Saudi billionaires, a former Airbus executive and a former banker who stands accused of playing a role in some of the money transfers.

Gaddafi’s former oil minister, Shukri Ghanem, who was on the list of those suspected of involvement, did not make it to trial. He was found dead in the Danube in Vienna in 2012 in unclear circumstances after having defected. French investigators were able to find Ghanem’s notebook, which was believed to have documentation of various payments made by Libya.

Since the Libya accusations surfaced, other allegations linked to the case have also emerged. An investigation into possible witness-tampering was opened last summer over suspicions there was a concerted effort to pressure Takieddine, who retracted his statements in 2020. Both Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, are under formal investigation, with the former first lady, 56, accused of hiding evidence.

Sarkozy has described the Libya allegations as part of a conspiracy.

The former president has already been convicted twice since leaving office. He was found guilty of corruption in 2021 for bribing a judge in a wiretapping case and sentenced to three years, two of them suspended, and banned from public office for three years. A court later halved the custodial sentence to six months, but Sarkozy was ordered to wear an ankle bracelet in December after losing another appeal.

Sarkozy was also convicted for illegal campaign funding during his 2012 re-election bid in a case known in France as the “Bygmalian affair”, a reference to one of the companies used to hide money that was being spent with fake invoices. 

Read moreFrance’s UMP ‘ordered €10m fake invoices’ to hide Sarkozy campaign spending

Before Sarkozy, the only French leader to be convicted in a criminal trial was his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption over a fake jobs scandal related to his time as Paris mayor.

Anti-corruption campaigners have hailed the Sarkozy trial as a victory for attempts to hold leaders accountable.

"These illicit financial flows demonstrate the mechanisms under which transnational corruption flourishes, at the expense of civilian populations deprived of essential public resources in the interests of private and political entities," said a joint statement from Transparency International, Sherpa and Anticor. All three have joined the trial as civil parties.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and Reuters)