Apr. 20, 2013 (TSR-Agencies) – War Criminal French former president Nicolas Sarkozy is to be investigated over allegations that he accepted cash from former Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’s founding father and leader Muammar Gadhafi to fund his 2006-2007 election campaign.
French Judicial sources confirmed on Friday that a formal probe has been opened that could lead to Sarkozy facing a second set of corruption-related charges arising from his campaign. Evidence has been promised to a French court that could prove former President Nicolas Sarkozy accepted more than €50 million ($65.5 million) in campaign donations from ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. According to French law, the maximum presidential campaign expenditure allowed is €22 million ($28.7 million) euros.
Sarkozy, 58, was charged last month with taking advantage of a person incapacitated by illness in a case that centers on allegations he accepted envelopes stuffed with cash from France’s richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt, L’Oreal heiress.
Existence of such incriminating documents proving that Sarkozy’s 2006-7 campaign was “abundantly” financed by the Libyans was revealed late last year by Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who is embroiled in a series of political financing scandals in France.
He’s currently facing corruption charges and is under investigation over allegations of his involvement in a money laundering operation between France and the Middle East, in which he is believed to have been involved for 20 years. His trial centers on claims that a series of bombings in 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan, were carried out in revenge for the non-payment of bribes agreed during the 1994 sale of a French submarine. The tragedy killed 14 people, including 11 French naval engineers. Takieddine is charged with acting as an intermediary in the deal.
“The payments continued after Sarkozy’s victory”, Takieddine added according to the Le Parisien, whose testimony confirms allegations made by Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam and French investigative website Mediapart.
He also claimed to be in possession of “evidence that three French companies in Libya have received contracts for fictitious services” to the tune of “more than €100 million.” However, Takieddine has refused to make his evidence public.
At a December 19 hearing, Takieddine said a number of meetings to organize the payments had taken place in 2006 and 2007 between Claude Gueant, Sarkozy’s chief of staff, and Gaddafi’s private secretary, Bashir Saleh. He said records of these meetings were in the possession of former Libyan Prime Minister Al Baghdadi Mahmoudhi, who is living in exile in France.
Takieddine was apprehended while attempting to take cash out of Libya on a private flight in March 2011, during the NATO-led anti-Gaddafi campaign.
Sarcozy adamantly denies any wrongdoing and is suing investigative news website Mediapart over the Libya allegations.
It was Mediapart who reported last April that Gaddafi’s regime had contributed 50 million euros ($65.5 million) to Sarkozy’s successful 2007 campaign.
Gaddafi’s regime was toppled and he himself was murdered and killed by US-NATO in 2011 following an uprising backed by a NATO intervention that Sarkozy was instrumental in organising and the unaccounted violator of international laws.
That won him momentary and ‘perception-managed’ international acclaim but his reputation has been blighted since leaving office last year by a slew of judicial probes into his conduct during his time as president or as a government minister.
Apart from the Libya and Bettencourt cases, he is the subject of ongoing investigations into alleged cronyism in the awarding of contracts for opinion polls, an illegal police investigation into journalists and alleged kickbacks on a Pakistani arms deal through Takieddine.
Sarkozy lost his immunity from prosecution after losing the 2012 presidential election to Francois Hollande.
In March he was placed under formal investigation on suspicion of taking advantage of Bettencourt to secure up to four million euros in financing for his 2007 campaign. L’Oreal heiress Bettencourt has suffered from dementia since 2006.
Under French law, being placed under formal investigation is the equivalent of being charged in other legal systems but does not mean the case will necessarily end in a trial.
If convicted in the Bettencourt case, Sarkozy faces up to three years in jail, a fine of 375,000 euros ($480,000), and a five-year ban from public office which would destroy any hope he entertains of making a political comeback.
French judges demonstrated their readiness to go after former leaders with their successful pursuit of Sarkozy’s predecessor as president, Jacques Chirac. He was convicted in 2011 on corruption charges related to his time as mayor of Paris.
Chirac, who was excused from attending his trial because of ill health, was given a two-year suspended prison term.
Since losing to Hollande, Sarkozy has concentrated on making money on the international conference circuit, but he has repeatedly hinted that he is considering another tilt at the presidency in 2017.
In March, he told magazine “Valeurs actuelles” that his sense of duty to his country could see him return to the political arena.
“There will unfortunately come a time when the question will no longer be ‘Do you want to?’ but ‘Do you have any choice?’.”
Married to former supermodel Carla Bruni, Sarkozy remains popular with voters on the right of the political spectrum but he is regarded as a divisive figure by centrist swing voters who tend to decide elections in France.
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INSIDER TRUTH from Lady MJ Santos : Sarcozy has been connected to Gaddafi a few years before he decided to invade Libya due to a disagreement between him and Gaddafi.
