Franco-Lebanese arms dealer and businessman Ziad Takieddine was on Wednesday formally placed under investigation - a French legal move that precedes official charges - for "aiding and abetting the misuse of company assets" and for "receiving" the proceeds, during his role as an intermediary in the controversial 1990s sale of three French submarines to Pakistan.
Judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, in charge of investigating suspected financial malpractice in the sale, notably the siphoning off of commission payments to illegally fund political party activity in France, also confiscated Takieddine's passport, assigning him to remain in France during the investigation and to regularly report his presence to the authorities, and ordered him to make no contact with other suspects named in the case.
The move came after Takieddine was questioned by Van Ruymbeke for several hours Wednesday morning, and follows testimony received by French police last Thursday from a witness who claimed Takieddine and two other men close to President Nicolas Sarkozy organized the transfer to Paris of secret cash sums withdrawn from a Swiss bank account at the time of the submarine deal.
The placing of Takieddine "under investigation", called a "mis en examen" in French, is highly embarrassing for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose closest aides are linked personally and professionally to the arms dealer, as Mediapart has revealed in a series of investigations that began in July. Takieddine is now formally a prime suspect in Van Ruymbeke's investigation into the suspected illegal funding, via the submarine sale to Pakistan, of former French prime minister Edouard Balladur's political movement, in which Sarkozy was a key figure.
The investigation led by Van Ruymbeke, aided by judge Roger Le Loire, is all the more sensitive because it was Nicolas Sarkozy, as Balladur's budget minister in 1994, who authorized the financial arrangements for the payment of intermediaries, among whom the most important was Ziad Takieddine. According to a document obtained by Luxembourg police and detailed in an official evidence report dated January 2010, Sarkozy supervised the creation, during the end of 1994, of a company in Luxembourg that was set up to handle payments of commissions paid from the submarines sale to Pakistan.
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But while that principally concerned Balladur's failed presidential election bid in 1995, Mediapart has revealed, through exclusive documents and witness statements, how Takieddine continued to act as a commission-paid intermediary for Sarkozy's staff in a number of weapons sales over several years beginning in 2002, when the current French president was a minister preparing his own election bid, for 2007. Furthermore, Takieddine has continued to play a key role in commercial and diplomatic endeavours under Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency, including that of special French presidential emissary to several ranking Arab regimes, notably in Libya and Syria.
Mediapart's very detailed revelations about the nature and extent of his activities and relations with President Sarkozy's senior staff can be found by clicking on the links at the end of this article. Balladur, Sarkozy and Takieddine have denied involvement in illegal party funding through commissions paid via weapons sales.
Mediapart has learnt that the testimony of the witness questioned last Thursday, and who has not been publicly identified, recounted how Takieddine was accompanied during several visits to withdraw cash from a bank in Switzerland by Thierry Gaubert, a former aide to Sarkozy when the latter was mayor of the town of Neuilly-sur-Seine and later when he was budget minister under Balladur. The witness said the cash sums were transported in large suitcases by the two men back to Paris where they were handed over to Nicolas
Bazire, another longstanding aide to Sarkozy, who served as principal private secretary to Prime Minister Balladur, who was in office at the time of the Pakistan weapons sale. The deal with Pakistan was settled just months before Balladur announced he was a candidate in the 1995 presidential elections, for which Bazire served as campaign director, and when then-budget minister Sarkozy served as campaign spokesman.
Bazire, who has held senior director roles in a number of major French companies, was best man to Nicolas Sarkozy during the president's marriage to Carla Bruni in 2008.
Contacted by Mediapart, Bazire, currently a senior director of French luxury goods firm LVMH, refused to be interviewed on the subjects raised in this article.
Takieddine's estranged British wife Nicola Johnson, who is engaged in a bitter divorce battle with the arms dealer (see Mediapart article here), notably over the size of a financial settlement, was also questioned by by French police acting on Van Ruymbeke's instructions, on August 30th. Johnson, 50, was asked to detail what she knew about Takieddine's personal fortune and his political relations. Johnson is seeking a settlement of 25 million euros from Takieddine. According to a statement of assets he signed on October 23rd 2008 in an application for a loan from Barclays Bank and exclusively revealed by Mediapart, the aggregate value of his assets was assessed at 97.2 million euros, over 40 million of which are located in France - where he pays no taxes. Based on a "breakdown of her husband's real and movable properties", Nicola Johnson estimates the couple's overall estate at a value of about 104,036,000 euros.
Written and photographic documents exclusively obtained by Mediapart and published in the preceding reports in this series have demonstrated the very close and longstanding links, both professional and social, between Takieddine and Nicolas Sarkozy's immediate entourage. Mediapart has revealed how Paris-based Takieddine surprisingly pays no income nor wealth tax in France.
Mediapart has further disclosed how in 2003 Takieddine was destined to receive 350 million euros in secret commissions from another arms contract, this time with Saudi Arabia, negotiated on behalf of Nicolas Sarkozy's aides via a company run by the French interior ministry when it was headed by Sarkozy. Mediapart has also disclosed how the arms dealer, while negotiating that contract, was saved by Sarkozy's entourage after an alleged assassination attempt on the exclusive Caribbean island of Mustique. Mediapart has detailed how Takieddine was mandated by Nicolas Sarkozy's staff, before and after he became French president, to negotiate major weapons and security contracts with the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Mediapart has also detailed how Takieddine played a central role in establishing close ties between France and Syria in the period between 2007 and 2009, including the introduction of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In return, Takieddine took part in negotiations led by French oil giant Total for contracts in Syria. According to internal notes and documents from Total, exclusively obtained by Mediapart, President Sarkozy leant political support to Takieddine's involvement in the discussions.
The investigations have also shown how Takieddine served as a protector for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's nephew Mohammed al-Senussi after he was charged in London with causing ‘grievous bodily harm' to two escort girls and how the businessman, backed by Sarkozy's Elysée Palace chief-of-staff, was paid almost 7 million euros by oil group Total in a gas field deal with Gaddafi's regime. French intelligence has also been shown to have been shielding the arms broker.
Judge Van Ruymbeke's investigation has established that Takieddine was imposed by Balladur's government as an intermediary both in the 1994 sale of the three Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, and that of three French La Fayette frigates to Saudi Arabia, a deal codenamed Sawari 2, at the end of 1994.
Takieddine and his associates were promised the equivalent of 33 million euros in secret commissions for the Pakistan deal, and 213 million euros for the frigates sale to Saudi Arabia.
Following Balladur's 1995 presidential election defeat at the hands of his mainstream right arch rival Jacques Chirac, the bitter feud between the Chirac and Balladur camps saw newly-elected Chirac cancel outstanding promised commission payments. While this reduced Takieddine's cut from the frigates sale to Saudi Arabia to the equivalent of 91 million euros, he had already received the equivalent of 28 million euros in commissions for the submarines sale to Pakistan.
It is over these payments that Takieddine was formally placed under investigation on Wednesday. The arms dealer's French-based wealth, which includes luxury apartments in Paris, a French Riviera villa and a yacht, were acquired from the proceeds of the commissions and are not declared in his French tax returns.
Before he was questioned on Wednesday, Takieddine's lawyer Olivier Pardo commented: "We have been asking to be questioned for seven months. For him [Takieddine] , it is very important."
Mediapart has learnt that during a police search of the Paris home of Thierry Gaubert on July 5th this year, documents relating to a bank account in the Bahamas were found. Gaubert, who has confirmed his links to Takieddine in several interviews with Mediapart, said he did not wish to comment on matters directly related to judge Van Ruymbeke’s investigation.
Documents and witness statements received over recent months by judges Van Ruymbeke and Le Loire have revealed the existence of large cash payments into bank accounts set up for Balladur’s 1995 election campaign at the Crédit du Nord bank. According to a police report, some 15 million French francs (about 2.3 million euros), including a single payment of 10 million French francs on April 26th 1995, were paid in cash into the accounts of Balladur’s campaign finance association, the Aficeb.
Questioned last year by a French parliamentary committee, Nicolas Bazire denied any secret funding of Balladur’s election campaign. “The scenarios raised in the press concerning the payment in cash of retro-commissions [political funding from weapons sales] are’ totally unbelievable,” he told the committee of MPs.
Meanwhile, in a book just published in France by independent investigative journalist Pierre Péan, La République des mallettes, a former French ambassador to the United Nations' offices in Geneva recounts allegations made to him that Nicolas Sarkozy personally transported cash from Switzerland to France during Balladur's 1995 election campaign.
Péan quotes the former ambassador, Michel de Bonnecorse, who also served as an advisor on African affairs for former president Jacques Chirac, as giving separate accounts given to him by two French, Swiss-based bankers, neither of whom, Bonnecorse claimed, knew each other. They reportedly told him of an incident during a visit by Sarkozy to Geneva to take part in an election meeting to rally expatriate support for Balladur's presidential campaign, which they situated between February and March 1995. "Bags of banknotes were removed that day from the bank and had no problem in being transported back into France," Péan recounts. "Nicolas Sarkozy, then budget minister, was travelling escorted by policemen and took the French exit of Geneva airport. That is how he returned [to France]".
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For more from Mediapart's series of investigations into the role and activities of Ziad Takieddine:
The secret financier who brings danger to the Sarkozy clan
Sarkozy, the arms dealer, and a secret 350 million-euro commission
The well-connected arms dealer and his tax returns
How Sarkozy aides saved arms dealer from paradise island 'death blow'
Exclusive: how Sarkozy's team sought grace for Gaddafi's murderous henchman
The arms dealer and his Paris party for the glitterati
Exlusive: how President Sarkozy's team dealt with Gaddafi
When Total paid the bill for the Elysée's secret emissary
How French intelligence shields the sarkozy clan's unofficial emissary
Divorce court freezes arms broker's assets
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English version: Graham Tearse