Nicolas Sarkozy's former right-hand man Claude Guéant has been placed under formal examination as part of the ongoing investigation into illegal funding of the ex-president's 2007 election campaign by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Guéant, 70, who was Sarkozy's chief of staff at the Elysée then France’s interior minister, had been detained for questioning by police officers from the anti-corruption squad since Friday and presented before an examining magistrate on Saturday. He was then formally placed under investigation – one step short of charges being brought – for “laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud as part of an organised gang”, “forgery” and “use of false instruments”.
Investigators who are probing the illegal funding of Sarkozy's election campaign – revealed by Mediapart in April 2012 – are looking into the origins of more than 500,000 euros that was transferred from abroad into Guéant's account in 2008. Part of this money was later used by Guéant to buy a flat in Paris. In the spring of 2013 Guéant explained that the money came from the sale of two paintings by 17th century Dutch artist Andries Van Eertvelt to a Malaysian lawyer. “It has got nothing to do with Libya,” he said at the time. However, experts in the art world cast doubt on the claims, saying that works by the artists are worth much less that the former interior minister says he got for them, perhaps as little as 15,000 euros each.
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Investigators from the anti fraud and corruption squad, the Office central de lutte contre la corruption et les infractions financières et fiscales (Ocliff), believe the Malaysian lawyer was simply a middle man and that the true source of the money may be a Saudi businessman called Khaled Ali Bugshan, who is of Yemeni origin. He was also questioned by detectives on Saturday and later placed under formal investigation for “laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud as part of an organised gang”. The Bugshan Group, based in Jedda, is said to be worth around 7 billion dollars and operates in a wide range of sectors, including cars, luxury cosmetics and watches, property, electronics and armaments.
According to Le Point magazine, Khaled Ali Bugshan is the man who oversaw the diversification of the family group into the defence sector. He is also seen as the Saudi intermediary of the businessman Alexandre Djouhri, who was very active in Libya as the start of Nicolas Sarkozy's term of office in 2007 and who remains close to Claude Guéant.
Following Saturday's formal placing under investigation, Guéant is now subject to a judicial order banning him from travelling to Malaysia, and from contacting certain individuals, including Khaled Ali Bugshan. Bugshan himself has been released on bail of one million euros and is banned from leaving France.
Guéant's name has been linked with Libyan funding of the Sarkozy presidential campaign for some time, though he and the former president strongly deny any wrongdoing. A preliminary investigation into the claimed funding was prompted by the publication of a Mediapart article on April 28th, 2012, which revealed the existence of an official document written by a senior figure in Libya in 2006 referring to the Tripoli regime’s approval of the payment of 50 million euros to help finance Sarkozy's campaign
The document, which survived the bombing of Libya during the bloody overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011, was obtained by Mediapart in April 2012 from former high-ranking officials of the Gaddafi regime. It is signed by the then head of Libya's foreign intelligence agency, Moussa Koussa.
Dated December 10th 2006, the letter, which has subsequently been established as being genuine, says that the regime had agreed to “support the electoral campaign” of Nicolas Sarkozy for his 2007 bid, and for the “sum of fifty million euros”.
The letter also states that an agreement on “the amount and method of payment” had been reached at a meeting two months earlier involving Brice Hortefeux, a close friend and political ally of Nicolas Sarkozy, who was then minister for local government. The meeting was said to have been held in the presence of Franco-Lebanese arms dealer and businessman Ziad Takieddine, who in 2005 had introduced Sarkozy, then interior minister, and his chief of staff Guéant to Libyan regime insiders.
Gaddafi's chief-of-staff, Bashir Saleh, who at the time was president of the Libyan African Portfolio (LAP), one of the main investment arms of the regime, was in charge of supervising the payments. After the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Saleh set up in exile in France.
It was back in March 2011, several days before the West's military offensive in Libya, that Gaddafi said that he had a “grave secret” that would bring down Sarkozy. A few days later his son, Saif al-Islam, revealed just what that secret was. “Sarkozy must repay Libya the money he took for his election campaign. We financed his election campaign and we have all the details and we are ready to publish them,” he said.
After Mediapart published its article on April 28th, 2012, about the illegal funding, the arms dealer Ziad Takieddine revealed more details. He said it was Claude Guéant who has given to Gaddafi's chief of staff Bashir Saleh the “necessary banking instructions for the transfers” destined for the presidential campaign. Takieddine said that the funding for the Sarkozy campaign was over 50 million euros.
'Guéant visited Tripoli eleven times in six months'
It also emerged that preparations for the covert funding of Sarkozy's 2007 campaign went back to 2005, at a time when Sarkozy was interior minister. That was the year he made his first visit to Libya. In a confidential note from Takieddine to Claude Guéant on September 6th, 2005, the middle man stated that the visit was “unusual” and had to be of a “secret character”. Takieddine's note added: “For this reason it will be preferable for CG [editor's note, Claude Guéant] to go alone and that the trip is carried out 'without fanfare'.” As for the aim of the visit, this was to make it “easier to discuss the other important issue, in the most direct manner...”
Takieddine was later to tell judges about the end of the brief visit to Tirpoli by Sarkozy. “The same evening, at the hotel, I came to greet Monsieur Sarkozy before his departure, I was accompanied by Monsieur [Libyan security chief Adbullah] Senussi. We went up to Monsieur Sarkozy's suite and we sat in the lounge. Monsieur Guéant was also present. The object of this discussion was, in particular, Monsieur Senussi's [court] sentence in absentia. Monsieur Guéant made assurances on this issue on several occasions.” In 1999 Senussi, who is also Gaddafi's brother-in-law, was convicted by a French court for his role in the 1989 bombing of a DC-10 passenger plane, Union de Transports Aériens (UTA) flight 772, flying over Niger that resulted in the deaths of 170 people, 54 of them French.
The arms dealer added: “At the end of that discussion, we had an evening debriefing about the visit at Monsieur Senussi's home. On this occasion Monsieur Senussi directly asked me what the cost was of a presidential campaign in France. I asked him why this question...and he answered me: 'Your friend asked the Leader for help in financing his campaign' and Monsieur Gaddafi wanted to know how much that might cost him.”
The arms dealer and middleman then said that on his return to Paris he met Claude Guéant to speak about it, “always at the same place, the Sofitel Hotel near the ministry of the interior”. Takieddine said: “This hotel has a little reception room with a bar and we always saw each other at this place... Monsieur Guéant replied to me the following way: 'Perhaps he might have asked for help but in any case not for campaign finance...he told me that Sarkozy was not yet a candidate and I insisted about the cost and Monsieur Guéant told me it was 22 million euros. I therefore returned to Libya several days later and I made clear to Monsieur Senussi the result of our conversation...Monsieur Senussi confirmed to me that there was a very clear request from Monsieur Sarkozy.”
Indeed, Claude Guéant seems to have been the main French contact for the Libyans. In a book published in 2014, Mort pour la Françafrique ('Dying for Françafrique'), published by Stock, security consultant Robert Dulas reported his conversations with the former Libyan prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who told him that in the space of six months Claude Guéant had visited Tripoli “eleven times”. According to the former Libyan premier, who is today in prison in Libya, these meetings were to discuss parallel financing between the two countries.
Before the fall of the Gaddafi regime Libyan security chief Adbullah Senussi had also spoken about the funding. Nicolas Sarkozy had “agreed to work with the Libyans and we helped him to become president of France by financing his campaign”, he declared in August 2011. “Several documents prove that we funded him. When he came to Libya Sarkozy also said to the Leader [editor's note, Gaddafi] that he would work hard to extricate [me] from the DC10 UTA case,” said Senussi.
Another senior figure who has talked about Claude Guéant's role is the former head of Libya's foreign intelligence agency, Moussa Koussa. On August 5th, 2015, he told magistrates in Qatar, where he fled in exile during the Libyan civil war with France's blessing, that the Gaddafi regime “had strong relations with France, it was Monsieur Claude Guéant who was my contact”.
But is not only figures from Gaddafi's regime who have spoken about the Libyan funding of the 2007 election campaign. Mediapart has already revealed that in an initial draft of a chapter of his book, Mohamed Al Magariaf, a long-standing opponent of Gaddafi who became de facto president of Libya from August 2012 to May 2013, highlighted the importance of Claude Guéant in the election financing.
“In confidence Claude Guéant revealed his mentor’s ambition to Bashir Saleh who obviously spoke about it with his boss,” wrote Al Magariaf. “With the presidential election quickly approaching, Gaddafi offered Sarkozy financial help. No sum was privately negotiated beforehand. It's now 2006. Gaddafi succeeded in convincing an ambitious man determined to win this major election that the quality of a campaign depended on the sums that you were ready to invest in it. Which is doubtless true...” However, this section was removed from the published version of the book.
The decision in April 2013 to proceed with a full judicial investigation into the suspected financing of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign by Gaddafi came after a series of police raids between January 16th and April 11th of the same year on the homes and offices of Saleh, Guéant and Takieddine. The raids were carried out by the French police’s national financial and fiscal investigation squad (the Division nationale des investigations financières et fiscales) the Dniff. It was during the searches of Guéant's home and offices in February 2013 that details of the 500,000 euro payment behind Guéant's formal investigation were unearthed. The Libyan funding investigation is into “active and passive corruption” and “influence peddling” and is being led by judges Serge Tournaire and René Grouman.
After revealing that his client was under investigation, Guéant's lawyer Philippe Bouchez el-Ghozi said on Saturday evening: “He is being accused not of acts of corruption linked to the so-called Libyan financing of the presidential campaign but is simply being asked to explain further about the sale of the two paintings he acquired nearly 22 years ago.” This was despite the fact that Guéant “was asked close to 300 questions, which for the most part concerned this so-called Libyan financing” Bouchez el-Ghozi added. The lawyer, who said Guéant was insisting on his innocence with “force and vigour”, added: “He is also being accused of tax fraud in not having declared the income from the sale of the paintings.”
Guéant – who as interior minister was France's 'top cop' - has also been questioned in custody in relation to two other affairs. One involved large cash payments that Guéant received when he was chief of staff to Nicolas Sarkozy, when the latter was interior minister. The other concerned his possible involvement in the massive 403 million euro mediation award in 2008 to controversial businessman Bernard Tapie. That award has now been overturned by the courts.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter