The contents of judicial phone taps on Nicolas Sarkozy show his concern about the lack of cooperation he received from France's new spy chief last year over the judicial investigation into the funding of the former president's election campaign by Libya in 2007. The transcripts of the phone taps, obtained by Mediapart, record his attempts to get information about the probe from Patrick Calvar, director of the Direction Centrale du Renseignement intérieur (DCRI), France's domestic intelligence agency. Worried about Calvar's apparent reluctance to divulge details on the subject, Sarkozy asks a close aide: “But is he loyal to us?”
Mediapart can also reveal that the judges investigating the funding by Muammar Gaddafi's regime of the former president's 2007 campaign have identified a potential Sarkozy “mole” in the intelligence services. They are examining, too, the possible role of a senior executive at aerospace group EADS (now the Airbus Group) in supplying information concerning the investigation to Sarkozy's entourage.
These latest revelations concern eight phone calls and two SMS messages that were intercepted in the summer of 2013 and the content of which has been examined by police officers from the newly-formed anti-corruption unit the Office central de lutte contre la corruption. At 2.44pm on June 21st 2013, Sarkozy's chief of staff Michel Gaudin, a former head or 'prefect' of the police in Paris, received a call from a man called “Jean-Louis”, whom the judges have identified as Jean-Louis Fiamenghi. Fiamenghi is the former head of the police's anti-terrorist unit Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (RAID) then of the police VIP protection service the Service de protection des Hautes Hersonnalités (SPHP). He was given the status of prefect by Sarkozy in 2010 and the two men are said to be very close.
During this intercepted conversation Jean-Louis Fiamenghi says that one of his connections has “some very particular things to reveal” to Nicolas Sarkozy. The “informant” in question was not just anyone; it was Philippe Bohn, current vice-president of EADS, according to information gleaned by Mediapart, Le Point magazine and Le Monde newspaper. His offices and home were searched by officers involved in the Libyan funding investigation on March 26th.
Born in 1962, Philippe Bohn knows Libya well, having headed up EADS' African and Middle Eastern operations, and he is very familiar with the world of French intelligence, whether it be the DCRI or the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), France's external intelligence agency. Politically he is on the right, and makes no secret of his closeness to his mentor, former minister Alain Madelin, and the defence minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, Gérard Longuet. During the 2007 presidential election Bohn was very active in his support for the centrist candidate François Bayrou.
After this phone call a meeting was organised the same day between Bohn, Sarkozy and Gaudin. According to what Mediapart has been able to piece together, Philippe Bohn was asked at that meeting about a Libyan diplomat, Moftah Missouri. As Colonel Gaddafi's interpreter, Missouri was in some ways the mouthpiece of Franco-Libyan relations for nearly 15 years. “It could be that I was questioned on some technical aspects concerning the institutional functioning of certain African countries,” Bohn told Mediapart cautiously. “But I took absolutely no initiative in any way to inform whomsoever it might be about current proceedings about which I don't know the ins and outs,” he stated.
The evening before the meeting between Sarkozy, Bohn and Gaudin the investigative TV programme Complément d’enquête on public broadcaster France 2 had screened a damning interview with Moftah Missouri. In it the interpreter first of all confirms the authenticity of an official Libyan document, revealed by Mediapart, according to which Gaddafi's regime had agreed in principle in 2006 to releasing 50 million euros to the Sarkozy camp for the presidential election the following year. Secondly the interpreter indicates that, according to his information, the equivalent to 20 million dollars had indeed been paid.
Even if Nicolas Sarkozy suspected Philippe Bohn of being a “schemer”, his expertise seems to have been taken sufficiently seriously for Michel Gaudin and the former president in person to call the current director of the DCRI Patrick Calvar on two occasions between June 21st and June 24th 2013 to ask for an explanation about the links between his service and this Libyan witness. The former president of the Republic was insistent, asking the head of the intelligence agency if his agents had information on him. Patrick Calvar replied that to his knowledge no investigation had been carried out on Missouri.
A 'mole' in the intelligence services
On June 24th, at 6.39pm, the investigators intercepted a new conversation between Sarkozy and his chief of staff. The two men were worried by the fact that the head of the DCRI had still not called them back to give them more information on Missouri. “He is very respectful, but embarrassed,” Sarkozy says of Patrick Calvar at one point. Then the ex-president uses an expression which seems to reveal the hold he thinks he has on the state apparatus, even if he is no longer in office. “But is he loyal to us?” asks Sarkozy. Michel Gaudin says he understands that he is. Patrick Calvar is said to be a friend of his predecessor at the DCRI, the very pro-Sarkozy Bernard Squarcini.
On the same day, at 7.08pm, there was a further phone call between the former president and his chief of staff. “Even so, it's not a good sign that [Calvar] has not called us back,” says a clearly worried Sarkozy. Michel Gaudin tells his boss that he has spoken again to his informant at EADS. The chief of staff tells Sarkozy on the phone that Bohn “has a meeting with our man at 11.30am”. The identity of this mystery man is unclear.
This succession of intercepted phone calls led on March 28th this year to Patrick Calvar being called in as a witness by the judges investigating the Libyan funding affair, Serge Tournaire and René Grouman, as Le Monde has already reported. According to Mediapart's information, when questioned about his “loyalty” to the Sarkozy camp, Patrick Calvar replied that his only loyalty was to the “Republic”. As for any investigations the secret services may have carried out on the Libyan interpreter Moftah Missouri, the spymaster declined to respond, pleading that such matters were “defence secrets” .
Meanwhile it seems that the judges and police officers have for several weeks had in their sights a serving agent at the DCRI, whom Mediapart can only name as Tristan H. - a recent law bans the media from revealing the identity of agents working for the intelligence services, on grounds of national security. The investigators are examining the actions on behalf of the Sarkozy camp carried out by this sub-lieutenant whose role is to monitor Libyan affairs. Patrick Calvar, who has not responded to Mediapart's request for an interview, was asked about this man by the judges, telling them he did not know him, even though he is one of the DCRI boss's own agents. Could Tristan H. be “our man” referred to by Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff? For the time being it is impossible to say.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
However these new discoveries about a network of potential informants for the Sarkozy camp, made up of officials still working for the state apparatus, will inevitably raise new questions about the extent to which the higher echelons of the country's administration have been compromised, to the benefit of a political clique.
The investigation by Serge Tournaire and René Grouman has already discovered, through a phone tap, how senior policeman Christian Flaesch tipped off former interior minister Brice Hortefeux – a close friend and ally of Sarkozy – over impending questioning over the Libyan affair. Flaesch, who even coached the former minister as to what questions to expect and what documents to bring, was sacked soon after news of this episode was made public.
Other phone taps, carried out at the start of 2014, on a mobile phone used by Nicolas Sarkozy but bought under the alias of 'Paul Bismuth', showed the former president and his lawyer Thierry Herzog worried about a possible police search in connection with the Libyan funding affair. In one call, on February 1st, Sarkozy asks his lawyer to “get in contact with our friends to make sure they are vigilant”. Herzog says that he was going to “call my correspondent this morning anyway...because they are obliged to go via him”. However, given the sensitive nature of the operation, Nicolas Sarkozy was worried about how the source could be contacted. The lawyer reassures the former president, telling him he has “a speech with him prepared”, in other words a pre-arranged code to communicate with him. “He understands straight away what one is talking about,” adds the lawyer.
The phone taps also revealed the closeness of Sarkozy and Herzog to a senior judge Gilbert Azibert. The transcripts of the intercepted phone conversations appear to suggest that the judge was meeting the former president’s lawyer and providing information about the progress of the Bettencourt affair in return for support in getting a plum judicial job in Monaco. In particular the Sarkozy camp wanted to know whether the president's official diaries seized as part of the Bettencourt affair would be ruled improper and thus returned, or whether judges investigating other affairs – for example over Libya – could also consult them. In the end the original decision to seize the diaries was upheld, meaning they can be used by other investigating judges. A investigation into alleged “influence peddling” has meanwhile been opened as a result of the Sarkozy and Herzog conversations.
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The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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