His message is clear, hammered with large arm reels or shrugs. No, ton Nicolas Sarkozy, this Tuesday, June 15, at the bar of the Paris court, he never had “the intention to tamper” with the accounts of his 2012 electoral campaign using “false conventions” and “ false invoices ”. No, insists the former head of state, accused in the Bygmalion trial, he was not either "negligent" or "reckless" in the face of warnings from those who had to watch over the expenses - these famous "alert notes "Accountants whom he prefers to call" prudential notes ".
And as for the 20 million euros of exceeding the hidden ceiling?
The former President of the Republic, dark suit over light shirt, affirms loud and clear this conviction: "I dispute that this money was used to supplement my campaign!"
I dispute that these false invoices were used to finance (it), ”he repeats.
“The money, it was not in my campaign, because if there had been, it would have been seen!
Sarko has gone mad, he offers caviar to the militants who come!
", He
explains, thus denying, in contrast to what the examining magistrate wrote in his order for reference, to have" undoubtedly benefited from the frauds revealed by the investigation "by having" means much greater than this. that the law authorized ”.
"Where is the solid gold campaign?"
Facing the President of the 11th Chamber, like a tribune at a meeting, the defendant flagship of the trial sometimes gets carried away vehemently, looking for support on the left and right of the bar. " Excuse me ma'am ! he will slip. I am in court, I defend my honor and I defend it with passion! »For his first appearance in this courtroom, the room is crowded, its geography - security obliges? - has been changed. His bodyguards keep watch in the first row; its communicators to the second; his lawyer, Me Thierry Herzog, to his left.
Nicolas Sarkozy responds to the sole offense of "illegal financing of an electoral campaign" and incurs a much lower sentence than the thirteen other defendants in the case - one year in prison and a € 3,750 fine, while others risk up to five years for use of forgery, breach of trust or fraud. "I understand that they were not dismissed for the same counts as me", he will justify in front of the prosecutor as for the "choice" of his absence until then at the hearing.
Asked at length about the material organization of his 2012 presidential campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy defends mordicus that it would not have been more expensive than that of 2007 and that it never “got carried away”.
“An amateur campaign with five meetings is a fable (…).
Where is the solid gold campaign?
How was my campaign different from those of François Hollande or Marine Le Pen?
"To hear it, he personally would have had only two requirements:" A good sound system, where my voice is not broken, I am not Patrick Bruel!
And after that, that one does not make me appear pale, here it is!
"
The grand Raout of Villepinte at six million euros and its 70,000 fiery militants?
The stage set?
“Villepinte is a shed.
We need a scene because the candidate has to be seen.
"
"Everything was square"
If there is a difference, he says, with regard to 2007, it is that in 2012 he was outgoing president and no longer, as at the time, boss of the UMP, which then managed without a provider, for an equivalent number of meetings (more than forty).
The choice to entrust them to Event or Bygmalion, whose names he had never heard before the revelation of the scandal in 2014?
It is therefore not his but that of Jean-François Copé, then at the head of the party, he tackles, by returning the ball to the court of the one "of which it is common knowledge" that they " did not have a confident relationship ”.
To read also Bygmalion trial: "I am the one who, if he had been informed, would have stopped all this," says Cope
If he has to admit an error, it is to have wanted to “bring together”, including by appointing the one who was the right arm of Jean-François Cope at the UMP (Jérôme Lavrilleux) as deputy director of the campaign.
And also to have "delegated" to all those he had appointed and whose choice he defends: "I cannot be held responsible for knowing whether the agent, the treasurer, the accountant have done this. that they had to do.
It was not for me, president and candidate, to do the job for them.
"
He probably saw the warning notes, he admits, but he never signed either an estimate or the "43 boxes of invoices".
And if he initialed the campaign account in fine, he says, it is because “everything was square” with even “1.6 million euros of margin”.
"Who benefits from crime, if not those who make money?"
“Did my campaign cost double?
Did my representative and my expert cover a system of false invoices?
No, replies Nicolas Sarkozy, who still insists: “It did not cost what we said.
"
"Why this fraud then?
»Insists the president.
The former president still returns to this hypothesis, however studied and swept away by the instruction, designating Bygmalion and its leaders: "Who profits from the crime," he said, if not to those who earn money.
What benefit did I get from it?
To organize the Sarkhoton to raise 11 million euros?
(Editor's note: to replenish the party's coffers after the invalidation of his account in 2013)?
To pay 363,000 € out of my pocket?
To be ridiculed for years?
"