French magistrates questioned the Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine on Thursday in Beirut about suspicion of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, a Lebanese judicial source told AFP.
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Ziad Takieddine has been on the run in Lebanon since his conviction in June 2020 to five years in prison in the financial aspect of the Karachi affair.
According to this judicial source, he has been imprisoned in Lebanon since last July following an arrest warrant issued by a Lebanese judge on the basis of his conviction in France.
Lebanon refuses to extradite its nationals and judges them on its soil if they are sentenced abroad.
The French delegation is made up of an investigating judge and two prosecutors, this source said.
The questioning took place Thursday in the presence of two Lebanese judges at the Court of Cassation at the Beirut courthouse.
The interrogation relates to the suspicions of "
financing of Sarkozy's campaign by the regime of Muammar Gaddafi and other financial affairs
", added this source. The former head of state has always contested any funding of this type. He is indicted in this case for "
criminal association
", "
passive corruption
", "
illegal financing of the electoral campaign
" and "
concealment of Libyan public funds
".
Ziad Takieddine, who for years accused Nicolas Sarkozy of having received money from the Libyan regime to finance his presidential campaign in 2007, retracted in an interview with Paris Match and BFMTV broadcast on November 11, 2020, that is, a to the day before this interrogation in Beirut. Other French financial magistrates than those working on suspicions of Libyan financing are investigating this retraction separately, suspecting that it may have been cashed in or at least channeled fraudulently.
The septuagenarian returned to his retraction two months later before the judges responsible for the main investigation who came to question him in Lebanon.
Known for his versatility, the intermediary then declared that his words had been "
distorted
".
Solicited, the French lawyer of Ziad Takieddine, Me Elise Arfi, indicated that she had "
not this information
" of an interrogation in Beirut.
The French national financial prosecutor's office did not respond to AFP's requests.