Will Nicolas Sarkozy's chair remain empty? Absent during the hearing which had decided to postpone the trial of the Bygmalion case on March 17, the former President of the Republic, dismissed on the sole count of "illegal financing of the electoral campaign", could not go to court from Paris than for his interrogation scheduled for mid-June. "He has the legal right to be represented, the penalty incurred being only one year in prison and a fine of 3,750 euros," said people around him. After a false start due to the state of health of one of the defendants' lawyers, sick with Covid-19, the legal debates on this politico-financial file which had torn the right after its revelation in 2014 and continues to stir old resentments must therefore begin this Thursday, May 20 to end on June 22.
During these four weeks, the 11th correctional chamber will dive behind the scenes of the campaign of the outgoing head of state in 2012 in order to dissect what is for justice a case of fraud, breach of trust and fraud aimed at concealing the explosion in spending at the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP).
A campaign which "took place, from the beginning to the end, in a general climate of absence of rigor and cheating", tackles the judge Serge Tournaire in his order for dismissal.
In total, 42.8 million euros were spent when the legal limit was 22.5 million euros - a colossal sum of 20 million euros of overrun.
Cope denounces "a target hijacking operation"
On the benches of the defendants, excluding the former head of state, they will be thirteen, including one woman, all suspected of having participated, to varying degrees, in the fraudulent arrangements put in place - most of them dispute the facts . They face three to five years in prison and a fine of up to 375,000 euros. However, no element of the investigation allowed the candidate Sarkozy to be involved in this aspect, nor the former secretary general of the UMP, Jean-François Copé, who benefited from a dismissal. . Distilled by the entourage of the first, the suspicions of embezzlement or of a "war chest" constituted for the benefit of the second were swept away by the investigation. But some keep the flame of doubt alive ...
At the hearing of March 17, on the strength of a loan contract signed in the summer of 2012 by the UMP and exhumed from the seals by the defense of the former campaign director of Sarkozy Guillaume Lambert (and revealed by Le Point), one of the defendants, the former Bygmalion executive Franck Attal, who called Jean-François Copé as a witness, requested additional information - another should be requested by the lawyers of Guillaume Lambert Me Christophe Ingrain and Rémi Lorrain.
According to Franck Attal, this document would prove that the former party boss, who has always claimed to have discovered the frauds only in 2014, could not have ignored them.
He also intends to challenge the constitution of civil party of the UMP, which claims 16 million euros in damages to those who will be sentenced.
"This is a target hijacking operation, I reserve my answers at the bar," Jean-François Cope told the Parisian - Today in France, specifying that he must be heard on May 27.
Double accounting and false invoices
In the meantime, next week, the four former managers of the company Bygmalion and its subsidiary Event & Cie will be questioned. It is this communication agency founded by two relatives of Jean-François Cope that organized most of the forty-four meetings of the Sarkozy campaign - and gave its name to the file. A USB key, provided to investigators at the start of the scandal by the lawyer for one of the bosses of the company, Me Patrick Maisonneuve, had uncovered a double accounting system allowing expenses to be broken down between the UMP and Event & Cie by means of false invoices on fictitious events or on real meetings but at an overvalued cost.
Former UMP executives will then be interviewed, including Jérôme Lavrilleux, former right-hand man of Jean-François Cope in the party and deputy director of the campaign.
At the time, his "confession" on BFMTV, at the end of May 2014, had caused a sensation.
Key figure in the case, the former MEP, who has been converted to green tourism, has planned to attend the entire trial.
"I want to hear everything, I know that I will be condemned", he tells us, explaining that he is afraid of being used "as a clay tray, guest of honor in the ball-trap" - in short, as a scapegoat.
To read also Bygmalion trial: "I am ready to assume", assures Jérôme Lavrilleux
The former campaign director Guillaume Lambert, the former officials of the Funding Association (AFCNS-2012), the accountants then Nicolas Sarkozy will then come to explain. Against the backdrop of the trial, this question left open by the instruction: who was the initiator of the fraudulent system?
