Several people are currently in police custody in the “witness tampering” part of the case of suspicion of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday (October 19th), partially confirming a information from the
Parisian
.
According to the daily, two people are in police custody.
It would be relatives of Noël Dubus, a man already convicted of fraud and who is indicted in the judicial investigation opened in early June on the conditions under which a resounding interview was organized last year with Ziad Takieddine.
The judicial source has not confirmed the number of people detained, their identity or the fact that they have been in police custody since Monday.
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In an interview published in November 2020 by the weekly
Paris Match
and BFM TV, the Franco-Lebanese businessman, who for years accused Nicolas Sarkozy of having received money from the Libyan regime for finance his presidential campaign in 2007, cleared the former head of state. The magistrates suspect that this retraction could have been bought or at least remotely controlled fraudulently. In this case, at least five people were indicted, including the boss of the paparazzi agency BestImage Mimi Marchand or the publicist Arnaud de la Villesbrunne, for "
witness tampering and criminal association with a view to committing a fraud in organized gang
”.
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One of the accused, the businessman Pierre Reynaud was also indicted in early October for "
extortion
".
Until then placed under judicial control, he was very recently, as indicated by
Le Parisien
, imprisoned in this case by decision of the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, confirmed the judicial source.
Mimi Marchand was imprisoned for a month this summer in this case for having violated his judicial control by discussing with one of the protagonists, before being released.
