PARIS (AFP) – Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, convicted twice in separate cases since leaving office, went on trial yesterday charged with accepting illegal campaign financing in an alleged pact with the late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
Sarkozy’s career has been shadowed by legal troubles since he lost the 2012 presidential election but he is an influential figure and also known to regularly meet President Emmanuel Macron.
The fiercely ambitious and energetic 69-year-old, who while in power from 2007-2012 liked to be known as the “hyper-president”, has been convicted in two cases, charged in another and is being investigated in connection with two more.
The new trial is starting barely half a month after France’s top appeals court on December 18 rejected his appeal against a one-year prison sentence for influence peddling, which he is to serve by wearing an electronic tag rather than in jail.
Twelve suspects are standing trial, including former close aides, accused of devising a pact with Kadhafi to illegally fund Sarkozy’s victorious 2007 election bid. They deny the charges.
If convicted, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison under the charges of concealing embezzlement of public funds and illegal campaign financing.
The trial is due to last until April 10. Sarkozy “is awaiting these four months of hearings with determination.
He will fight the artificial construction dreamed up by the prosecution. There was no Libyan financing,” said his lawyer Christophe Ingrain.
Sarkozy is still not wearing the electronic tag – a process which could take several weeks – and spent the holidays in the Seychelles with his wife, model and singer Carla Bruni, and their daughter.
In the current case against Sarkozy, the result of a decade of investigations, it is alleged that he and senior figures pledged to help Kadhafi rehabilitate his international image in return for campaign financing.
Tripoli had been blamed by the West for bombing attacks on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie in Scotland and UTA Flight 772 over Niger in 1989 that killed hundreds of passengers.
Another alleged beneficiary was Kadhafi’s brother-in-law and intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi who was jailed for life in absentia by France for the attack on UTA Flight 772 and has long been wanted for questioning over the Lockerbie bombing.
Sarkozy has denounced the accusations as part of a conspiracy, insisting he never received any financing from Kadhafi and that there is no evidence of any such transfer.
