Sarkozy held the presidency between 2007 and 2012, and he faces a series of accusations of corruption, illegal financing of his campaign, and concealment of embezzlement of public funds.
French prosecutors demanded the trial of former President Nicolas Sarkozy and 12 other people in the case of suspected Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential election campaign, according to a source close to the file announced Thursday.
The source told Agence France-Presse that prosecutors in the Financial Crimes Department requested the trial of 13 people, most notably Sarkozy, on charges of seeking to obtain millions of euros in financing from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy held the presidency between 2007 and 2012, and he faces a series of accusations of corruption, illegal financing of his campaign, and concealment of embezzlement of public funds.
The former president denies all of these charges. The two investigative judges responsible for this file, which has been open since 2013, must now decide to proceed with a new trial.
The investigation in this case was opened after the publication of the “Mediapart” website in 2012, between the two presidential elections, a document that supposedly proves that Sarkozy’s electoral campaign, which ended with his victory in 2007, was funded by the Gaddafi regime.
Over the course of nearly a decade, the judges have accumulated a troubling body of evidence that has framed the hypothesis that Sarkozy’s campaign received funding from Gaddafi.
Charges have been brought against 13 people so far, including the French-Lebanese Ziad Takieddine and the French-Algerian Alexandre Johari, two businessmen suspected of acting as mediators, in addition to former ministers Claude Guéant, Eric Wuerth and Brice Urutfo.
