French police raid home of former president Nicolas Sarkozy

French police raid home of former president Nicolas Sarkozy





03 July, 2012, 19:12



Police officers have carried out a number of raids in Paris - on the villa Nicolas Sarkozy shares with his wife Carla Bruni, on the law offices of the former president's attorneys and on the apartment provided to him by the government.
Judge Jean-Michele Gentil and financial police searched the Sarkozys’ villa Montmorency, located in the French capital's most luxurious district, the offices of Arnaud, Claude and Associates, in which Sarkozy is a shareholder, and an apartment given to the former president by the government.

The raids are reportedly linked to a campaign finance corruption scandal involving billionaire L’Oreal heiress Lilian Bettencourt.

Bettencourt, France’s richest woman, is alleged to have illegally contributed two payments of 400,000 euros each to Mr Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign.

Both were traced to Swiss accounts, and one was allegedly received by Sarkozy in person in Paris, in return for offering the cosmetics magnate tax breaks once he came to power.

Numerous witnesses including a butler, nurse and chauffeur have described seeing Mr Sarkozy paying personal visits to the Bettencourt mansion in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the upmarket Paris suburb.
Sarkozy’s presidential immunity from prosecution expired on June 16th and his former budget minister Eric Woerth has already been charged with corruption.
This is just one of several cases Sarkozy may be investigated for, now that constitutional protection has been removed. He is also facing allegations that he profited from illegal arms sales to Pakistan, and that he accepted millions from former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
His lawyer Thierry Herzog said Sarkozy, who was defeated in his re-election bid in May by the Socialist Francois Hollande, is currently in Canada with his family.

MORE:


Gaddafi put up 50M euro for Sarkozy’s presidential bid – report


29 April, 2012, 17:16



Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had agreed to fund French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign – to the tune of 50 million euro, a new report says.
The Paris-based investigative website Mediapart published “documentary evidence” that Gaddafi was ready to stump up tens of millions of dollars to help Sarkozy win the French presidential race.
Mediapart claimed Saturday that the 2006 document was provided by "former senior [Libyan] officials, who are now in hiding." They further claim the document came “from the archives of the secret service,” and was signed by Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief and later foreign minister, Moussa Koussa.
In it, Koussa noted “an agreement in principle to support the campaign for the candidate for presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy, for a sum equivalent to 50 million euro."
Sarkozy attempted to deflect the allegations when confronted by a TF1 presenter, saying, "If [Gaddafi] had financed it, I wasn't very grateful." Sarkozy’s sarcastic comeback was in reference to France’s lead role in the NATO campaign that led to Gaddafi’s brutal demise.
'It's obviously an attempt to draw away attention after Dominique Strauss-Kahn is back on stage,' Nicolas Sarkozy told the French media.
On Friday the former IMF-chief, who was once tipped to win France's presidential vote, but dropped out of the race after a sex scandal, claimed Sarkozy and other political rivals orchestrated his downfall.
'This only plays into Socialists' hands as they don't want to be reminded that they were going to make him the next French president,' Sarkozy added.
It’s not the first time the French president denies allegations his 2007 campaign was sponsored by Tripoli.
In March 2012 Sarkozy also rejected claims he took €50 million from Muammar Gaddafi.

The scandal with alleged finance from Libya dates back to March 2011 when Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam demanded that Sarkozy return the money his family had given for the 2007 campaign:
“He's disappointed us. We have all the bank details and documents for the transfer operations and we will make everything public soon," – threatened Saif al-Islam in a TV interview during the NATO-backed military campaign in Libya.
French politicians are banned from receiving campaign contributions from foreign states, and a French judge is currently looking into the allegations.
The latest document has surfaced at a particularly sensitive time for Sarkozy, who lost the first round of the French presidential vote and is currently trailing his Socialist rival Francois Hollande in the polls.
The second round of the presidential election is scheduled for May 6.