Suspicions of Libyan financing: what is the real risk for Nicolas Sarkozy, expected in court this Monday ?

Another trial for Nicolas Sarkozy: the former head of state is expected at the Paris court this Monday, January 6, 2025 afternoon, this time to answer, for four months and alongside three former ministers, accusations of illegal financing of his 2007 campaign by Muammar Gaddafi's Libya.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, 69, will be present for the opening of his trial at 1:30 p.m., his entourage assures, describing him as “combative” and “determined” to prove his innocence in the face of what he has always called a “fable”.

He is accused of having made, in late 2005, notably with the help of his very close friends Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, a “corruption pact” with the extremely wealthy Libyan dictator who fell in 2011, so that he “support” financially his accession to the Elysée.

This is the fifth trial in five years of Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted at first instance and on appeal in the Bygmalion case (on the financing of his 2012 campaign, he filed an appeal in cassation), and in the Bismuth case.

In this last case, known as the “wiretapping” case,his appeal was rejected in mid-December, making his sentence final to one year in prison with an electronic tag, an unprecedented punishment for a former president.

He is not yet wearing a tag – it could take several weeks – which allowed him to spend his holidays in the Seychelles, with his wife, the singer Carla Bruni, and their daughter.

The trial will begin with the roll call of the 12 defendants, the civil parties and the witnesses, before procedural questions, which should occupy the court the entire first week.

Hearings until April 10

The hearings will take place on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, until April 10. According to his entourage, Nicolas Sarkozy will be present at each hearing during the first month, which is devoted to suspicions of financing. Additional aspects will be addressed in the following weeks.

Tried for corruption, receiving stolen public funds, illegal campaign financing and criminal association, he faces 10 years in prison and a fine of 375,000 euros, as well as a deprivation of civil rights (therefore ineligibility) of up to 5 years.

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“Valises”

“He will fight the artificial construction imagined by the prosecution. There is no Libyan financing of the campaign”, declared his lawyer, Me Christophe Ingrain.

The prosecution believes that the “corruption pact” was formed in the fall of 2005 in Tripoli, under the tent of Muammar Gaddafi, known for being very generous with his foreign visitors.

Nicolas Sarkozy was then an ambitious and very media-friendly Minister of the Interior thinking about the presidential election “not just when (he) shaves”. His visit to Libya was officially devoted to illegal immigration.

“Bundle of clues”

The prosecution was unable to establish an exact total amount of the alleged financing. But after 10 years of investigation, a “bundle of evidence” convinced the investigating judges of the existence of this financial support.

The magistrates relied in particular on the statements of seven former Libyan dignitaries, the discreet trips to Libya of Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, suspicious transfers and the notebooks of the former Libyan Minister of Oil Choukri Ghanem, found drowned in the Danube in 2012.

The supposed counterparts ? First, an international rehabilitation: Gaddafi will be welcomed with great pomp by Nicolas Sarkozy, newly elected president, during a controversial visit to Paris, his first in three decades.

But also the signing of major contracts and a judicial helping hand to Abdallah Senoussi, director of Libyan intelligence sentenced to life in his absence in France for his role in the attack on the UTA DC-10 in 1989, which cost the lives of 170 people, including 54 French nationals. About twenty relatives are civil parties in the trial.

Woerth, Djouhri, Takieddine among the defendants

Among the defendants are the former minister Eric Woerth, treasurer of the campaign, in which cash of unknown origin circulated according to the investigation. As well as two shadowy men, experienced in parallel international negotiations: the discreet Alexandre Djouhri and the sulphurous and versatile Ziad Takieddine – now on the run in Lebanon.

On one of the latter's accounts were found three transfers from the Libyan authorities totaling 6 million euros; and he described “suitcases” given to Claude Guéant, containing “large bills”.

The lawyer of the former minister, Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi, denounced “a sum of assertions, hypotheses and other approximations”.