While he will be tried for corruption this fall, he is now indicted for "criminal association".
Nicolas Sarkozy's legal boat has just been weighed down by a new embarrassing charge.
The former President of the Republic was indicted last Monday after four days of questioning in the office of the investigating judges responsible for the case of the alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 campaign. The announcement was made made by the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF), confirming information from Mediapart.
"My innocence is being flouted again", reacted on Facebook the former head of state by once again contesting any illicit financing of his victorious campaign.
In this Libyan affair, Nicolas Sarkozy is already under a triple indictment for “passive corruption”, “concealment of embezzlement of public funds” and “illegal campaign financing”, pronounced in March 2018. On the basis of 'a bundle of disturbing clues, he is suspected of having benefited from the windfall of the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi to finance his victorious march to the Elysee Palace.
Several of his relatives - his former campaign director Claude Guéant and his former treasurer Eric Woerth - are implicated in this case.
"I know that the truth will eventually triumph"
This time, it is a new side of this drawer case that the judges are exploiting.
On January 31, Thierry Gaubert, a former collaborator of Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Minister of the Budget, was indicted for "criminal association".
He is suspected of having received in February 2006 on an account in the Bahamas a transfer of 440,000 euros from the Rossfield company belonging to the intermediary Ziad Takieddine.
However, as Mediapart had detailed, the accounts of this offshore company were supplied with Libyan money.
In the eyes of the judges, the money received by Thierry Gaubert would then have been used to supplement the campaign of the former host of the Elysee Palace, which he disputes.
Since his indictment, Thierry Gaubert has not been heard again by the magistrates of instructors.
On the run since his sentence to 5 years in prison in the financial aspect of the Karachi affair last June, Ziad Takieddine reacted through the voice of his lawyer Me Élise Arfi.
"In the eyes of my client, justice is certainly moving slowly but in the right direction," said the latter.
In 2016, the Franco-Lebanese intermediary explained that he had paid 5 million euros in cash to Claude Guéant and Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006-2007.
On his Facebook page, the former President of the Republic denounces an injustice.
"The French must know that I am innocent of what I am accused of giving improbable credit to the statements of assassins, notorious crooks and false witnesses.
I know that the truth will eventually triumph, ”he asserts.
This new indictment comes at a time when its judicial calendar is already very busy.
Next November, he is to be tried for “corruption” in the so-called wiretapping case alongside his lawyer Thierry Herzog and the former magistrate Gilbert Azibert.
And in March 2021, he is due to appear for the alleged illegal financing of another campaign, the one lost in 2012, in the Bygmalion case.
