It is without doubt the most emblematic of investigations undertaken by Mediapart, because of what is at stake, its duration and the difficulties encountered along the way. Yet it is also that which has been the less commented in the public arena, whether by fellow journalists or by politicians. Could they be afraid of affronting the truth that it holds, such is it so explosive, devastating and damning?
For while the Bettencourt affair detailed the illegal antics of an oligarchy, and while the Cahuzac affair unveiled political imposture, both of them involving fraud and tax evasion,the Libyan funding case places us before a far more spectacular and damaging reality. Namely, the corruption of a French political clan through financing from a foreign country governed by a dictatorship.
Corruption which, furthermore, accompanied that clan’s takeover of the structure of the state, right up to its pinnacle, by the secret funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign. One cannot exclude that the inadmissible secrets involved in this corruption played a part in the decision by France in 2011 to launch a military campaign against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, causing the overthrow and death of the dictator who had previously been welcomed in Paris amid great pomp and ceremony.
For more than three years, since 2011, Mediapart journalists Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske have led the investigation with the approach this website has made its own: to seek out the facts through our own initiative, independently of political or judicial agendas, without serving as a relay for partisan interests, lifting the veil on unknown events and facts in order to place the reality of what they display in the public arena. Dozens upon dozens of cross-checked documents and witness accounts make up the solid material of this investigation that concludes that Muammar Gaddafi provided financing to Nicolas Sarkozy.
With in mind the display of proximity between the two during Gaddafi’s official visit to Paris in 2007, the two Mediapart journalists painstakingly unravelled the thread that leads to the secret reason behind it: the financial relationship that began in 2005, when Sarkozy was French interior minister, knotted on the sidelines of visits and contracts led notably by Paris-based arms broker Ziad Takieddine, Sarkozy’s chief-of-staff Claude Guéant and his longstanding friend and political ally Brice Hortefeux.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Takieddine’s personal archives, obtained by Mediapart before becoming the subject of a judicial investigation, offer a detailed and documented account of this. The contents of his lengthy records are corroborated in the statements given to Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske by several former and serving Libyan officials. Overcoming considerable obstacles, amid a climate of the settling of scores after the fall of Gaddafi, in which a number of witnesses disappeared – assassinated or otherwise silenced – Mediapart’s journalists finally discovered an official document detailing the secret Libyan funding, sealed at the highest level.
Revealed by Mediapart on April 28th 2012, the document came from archives that are typical of the long ‘memory’ of authoritarian regimes. Dated December 10th 2006 and signed by Moussa Koussa, one of Gaddafi’s closest aides and head of the Libyan foreign intelligence services, it endorses “the agreement in principle” to “support for the electoral campaign of the candidate Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy for the presidential elections, to the sum of fifty million euros”.
We published this document in the certain knowledge that it was authentic, based on the manner in which it was obtained, its presentation and style and also its contents which confirmed other facts already revealed by Mediapart.
Since the publication of the document, the basis of the counter-attack against Mediapart by Nicolas Sarkozy and his entourage has been their claim that it is not genuine. Their attempt to cover up the scandal was in spite of the fact that the French justice authorities decided that Mediapart’s revelations were credible enough to prompt the opening, in early 2013, of an investigation into acts of “corruption” led by magistrates Serge Tournaire and René Grouman.
Nicolas Sarkozy has never attempted to sue Mediapart for defamation, which would have at least been a straightforward legal move within the framework of the laws governing the press. Instead, he preferred to create a smokescreen by accusing us of having published a falsified document. This began with a complaint lodged with the public prosecutor’s office, which triggered a preliminary investigation and which, naturally, dismissed the case. Following that, he lodged a second complaint, in the summer of 2013, in which he constituted himself a civil party, explicitly citing Mediapart, its editor-in-chief and investigative journalists Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske.
Placed under the status of ‘assisted witnesses’, the only status under which we could, by law, be questioned (in the presence of our lawyers), we have contested Nicolas Sarkozy’s diversionary tactics which, by side-stepping the rights of the press which protect citizens’ right to know, ran the danger of breaching the fundamental principle of the right of journalists to protect the secrecy of their sources.
But far from lending credence to the calumnious suspicion-mongering of Nicolas Sarkozy and his clan, the investigation by judges Cros and Legrand has in fact amassed witness statements that support Mediapart’s findings and, notably, point to the authenticity of the document in question.
Unfortunately, during all this time, and sometimes via the same relays used in the Cahuzac affair, the Sarkozy camp has succeeded with its manoeuvres within the media to push the Libyan funding scandal into the background, accompanied by comments of suspicion, some in unpleasant terms, about our work from fellow journalists. From Le Monde to Vanity Fair, and not counting those indifferent media organizations who preferred to turn their backs – with Agence France-Presse among the first in line – the dominant opinion expressed was that of doubt over the authenticity of the document published by Mediapart in April 2012.
There is every reason to suppose that if ever, against all odds, the judicial investigation had also leant doubt on the authenticity of the document, the dominant media in France would have swiftly moved to shout the news loud and clear. Yet the reverse is the case, and that is the news they have chosen to remain silent about.
The heavy silence of weakened democracies
To stifle news, it suffices to not report it. The level of the intensity of a democracy is illustrated by this, where journalists forget that they are also the players and the upholders of democracy as demonstrated by their uncompromising respect of citizens’ right to know. French democracy must be in proper difficulty if the revelation that a panel of experts has, without reservation, authenticated a document that details the plans of a foreign country to corrupt the highest levels of the French state can be passed by in silence.
As explained in our article dated November 14th, the three experts mandated by judges Cros and Legrand compared several signatures of Moussa Koussa against that which appears on the document published by Mediapart. Their conclusion left no doubt: all the signatures were those of the same hand – that of Moussa Koussa. Questioned by the judges in Qatar, where he has lived in exile since the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Koussa himself has described the “contents” of the document as “not false”, and now his signature upon it is shown to be genuine.
So it is that Koussa, whose initial dismissal of the authenticity of the document was, among others, touted around by Nicolas Sarkozy and his entourage immediately after its publication, has now been confirmed by the French judicial investigation as being indeed the person who signed the secret Franco-Libyan agreement.
In short, the calumnious legal procedure launched by the former French president against Mediapart has suddenly turned against him. What he claimed, in public meeting after public meeting, was a falsified document, presenting himself as the victim of fraudulent journalists and persecuting magistrates, has proven quite simply to be a true document, as we have always maintained. It is evidence of one of the biggest scandals ever to involve the French presidential office.
In a vibrant democracy, news of the sort would obviously be propelled to the top of the public agenda. Press agencies, and notably Agence France-Presse - which has a public service mission towards its subscribers who include the regional press - would have reported it. Other media would have followed, demanding a response from Nicolas Sarkozy and his entourage. Politicians across the political divide would have been asked to react to the news.
Instead of that, there has been nothing. Nothing in the slightest form. Only the heavy silence of weakened democracies that have given up the will to be demanding of themselves. Without reading Mediapart, our fellow citizens would not know that the long saga of the Libyan funding scandal had reached a decisive judicial stage, one that accredits our investigation and the evidence of corruption it has revealed.
It is sometimes necessary to fight in order that information that upsets the interests of some and those in power reaches the public arena. It is in this spirit that I who received from the investigating magistrates by registered mail a copy of the notification of the conclusions of the panel of experts have decided to make public its contents in full.
It is information of public interest about a scandal of state, and can be consulted below (available in French only).