The process tries to clarify the alleged delivery of 50 million euros from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi
MADRID, 6 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy will face a court again starting this Monday at the start of the trial for the alleged irregular financing of his 2007 electoral campaign, a plot that includes an alleged pact with the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The trial caps a decade of investigations into allegations that Sarkozy accepted €50 million from Gaddafi to boost his ultimately successful 2007 campaign.
The former president’s lawyer, Christophe Ingrain, has assured in a statement reported by French television BFMTV that “there is no special relationship” between France and Gaddafi’s Libya and that “the court must focus on the reality of the facts and distance itself from this vague theory.”
The former president will be tried by the Paris judicial court, from Monday, January 6 to April 10, for “corruption, concealment of embezzlement of public funds, illegal financing of campaigns and criminal conspiracy” and will have to appear this afternoon with a electronic bracelet, after having been definitively sentenced on December 18 to one year in prison for corruption in the wiretapping matter.
Eleven other defendants are involved in the process, including three former ministers, including two former occupants of the Interior portfolio: Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, as well as a friend of the former president, Thierry Gaubert. Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, accused of having acted as a cog in the deal and a source of information for investigators, is in Lebanon and is not expected to appear before the Paris court.
Nicolas Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison, a fine of 375,000 euros, a ban on some of his civil rights (including the right to vote) and from holding public office.