He was the only one to reply “yes” and it didn't go well. Before finally wrapping up their investigation into the sprawling Gaddafi-Sarkozy affair that had begun nine years earlier, investigating judges Aude Buresi and Virginie Tilmont wrote to the lawyers of the leading figures under investigation to see if their clients wanted to be heard one last time. All of them, from the former head of the French state Nicolas Sarkozy to his former ministers Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux and Éric Woerth, politely declined the offer.
All except one: Thierry Gaubert.
On October 14th 2022 the businessman, who worked for Nicolas Sarkozy in the 1980s and 1990s before gradually disappearing from the political stage as he became embroiled in legal affairs, went to the judges' chambers in Paris to plead his case one last time.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
It was no easy task. Having emerged late in the Libyan investigation – which centres on claims that Muammar Gaddafi's regime helped fund Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign – Thierry Gaubert appears to be the missing link in this massive state (or states) scandal. According to the judicial dossier he was a discreet but essential cog in the process, a phantom figure from the past who is now accused of being the link between the upper reaches of the French Republic and its most hidden, shadowy agents. He is also said to have been one of the Sarkozy clan's cash conduits through which some of the money from the alleged corruption passed.
Questioned by the two investigating judges, Thierry Gaubert played his final cards. Yes, he had had an undeclared bank account in The Bahamas; it had even led to his conviction for tax fraud. Yes, he withdrew lots of cash. Yes, he had links – including financial – with Ziad Takieddine, the middleman used by Sarkozy's entourage to deal with Gaddafi's inner circle.
Yes, he has been a friend “for a very, very long time” with the former minister Brice Hortefeux. But no, he emphatically was not the man that the judiciary seemed to think he was.
His wealth hidden in tax havens was simply the secret of his grand “lifestyle”, he told the judges. “I had this chance to have money and I took it. I had three children to take care of, after all. There are some very wealthy people on this planet … Mr Bernard Arnault [editor's note, founder, chair and CEO of luxury goods group LVMH] spends lots of money. When you have money you spend it ... Bernard Arnault isn't asked what he does with his millions,” declared Thierry Gaubert, according to the official report of his hearing.
But in this particular case the judges were posing questions based on recent discoveries made by detectives from the anti-corruption unit OCLCIFF.
Gaubert when confronted with the evidence: 'I have no recollection at all'
As Mediapart has already reported, the investigation has gathered lots of evidence. In February 2006 Thierry Gaubert received in his Bahamas account the sum of 440,000 euros from a senior Libyan figure, the head of that country's military intelligence Abdullah Senussi (he was also Gaddafi's brother-in-law), who had used an offshore company belonging to Ziad Takieddine as cover.
This money, part of which was later withdrawn in cash in France, was transferred just a few days after a secret meeting was held in Tripoli between Abdullah Senussi, Ziad Takieddine and Brice Hortefeux. We know that the minister – whose actual responsibility was for French regions – had hidden this meeting from the French diplomatic authorities; he attended it with neither bodyguard nor interpreter. There was a reason for this: at the time Senussi was the subject of an international arrest warrant and wanted by the French legal authorities. This was after he was given in his absence a life sentence by a Paris court for his part in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airline DC10 passenger plane over Niger, in which 170 people lost their lives, including 54 French nationals.
When questioned as part of the investigation, Abdullah Senussi said that the meeting concerned the prospect of secret funding by Tripoli of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign. Several days later money was transferred via a maze of companies hidden in tax havens, and which went to a leading figure from the past from within Sarkozy's inner circle.
I note that there is an upper-case 'N' and a lower-case 's', normally I put an upper-case 'N' and an upper-case 'S' so perhaps it isn't Nicolas Sarkozy.
And some of Thierry Gaubert's records, recently found by detectives, show that the latter was fully aware of Ziad Takieddine's and Brice Hortefeux's endeavours in Libya. Moreover, according to the judges a mysterious note on his computer dated the end of January 2006 – in other words, just before the payment was made – could provide a link between the Libyan money that was transferred and Nicolas Sarkozy's forthcoming presidential campaign.
The note's contents seem clear: “Ns-campaign”. But Thierry Gaubert did not agree. “I note that there is an upper-case 'N' and a lower-case 's', normally I put an upper-case 'N' and an upper-case 'S' so perhaps it isn't Nicolas Sarkozy,” he told the judges. “'Campaign' is a word that means a lot of things.”
Thierry Gaubert swore that he had “absolutely not taken part” in the 2007 presidential campaign. The reason, he said, was that he was already “embroiled” in legal cases – he was eventually convicted in 2012 over a housing funding case.
His responses faltered when questioned about the meetings he had with Brice Hortefeux before and after the latter's Libyan trip. He could no longer recall very much. In any case, he said they had never discussed the presidential election, nor Hortefeux's trip to Tripoli with their mutual friend Ziad Takieddine. Instead, said Gaubert, they spoke more about the tempestuous relations between Hortefeux and his wife. As for his meetings with Ziad Takieddine, it was a similar story. “I have no recollection at all.”
The judges pressed on with their questions, reminding Thierry Gaubert that the investigation “can establish that [you] were perfectly aware of Ziad Takieddine's trips to and from Libya, moreover [you mentioned] his trip and [made] a link with Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign, as attested to by the note of January 26th”. Gaubert replied: “That's simply supposition.”
Ziad Takieddine's former wife had been more straightforward when she was questioned as part of the investigation. “Gaubert was interested in Libya, about political issues, issues of campaign funding, and Senussi had to be helped to get the campaign funding,” she said.
'I don't deny having had a role liaising between Takieddine and Hortefeux'
During his final questioning by the judges, Thierry Gaubert came across as more and more forgetful as the questions became ever more precise. Faced with numerous documents which prove that he had indeed played a discreet role as intermediary between Ziad Takieddine and Sarkozy's office at the Ministry of the Interior - even though officially he worked for a bank - Thierry Gaubert was forced to give ground. “I don't deny having had a role liaising between Takieddine and Hortefeux,” he told the judges. However, he had “absolutely no recollection” of the subjects discussed.
In relation to the Libyan documents that were found during a search of his computer, Thierry Gaubery was again both blunt and disarming: it in no way proved that he was interested in Libya, he insisted.
'Diner NS'? That doesn't mean I dined with Nicolas Sarkozy.
In similar vein, Thierry Gaubert sought to downplay at all costs the nature of his friendship with Nicolas Sarkozy. The investigation has shown that this continued well after 1996, contrary to what the two had told first of all the press (in particular the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche) and then the judges. Gaubert's digital records, which consist in particular of emails and notes, show the contrary: the two men never stopped being in touch.
Once again, though, Thierry Gaubert remained assured when questioned by the judges, including in relation to all mentions of meetings with “NS” that feature in his records. For example, regarding a note stating “Dinner NS”, Thierry Gaubert observed: “That doesn't mean I dined with Nicolas Sarkozy … It could be someone who told me they were going to have dinner with Mr Sarkozy.”
Thierry Gaubert had also forgotten about the two meetings that he had with Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée in March and May 2008. “I don't recall them at all,” he said. The judges pointed out to him that, nonetheless, traces of his visits remained in the presidential archives. “I don't recall that. I would have remembered,” he responded.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
There is a great deal at stake. For Nicolas Sarkozy, the unearthing of the allegedly corrupt Senussi/Takieddine network via the intermediary role of Gaubert and Hortefeux is one of the sticky points in the Libyan case, even if it is far from being the only one for the former head of state.
The investigation has in fact shown that in parallel with the hidden payments, the Sarkozy team was actively trying to get the international arrest warrant against Senussi over the DC-10 affair lifted in France. The judges suspect this may potentially have been as a trade-off for the alleged corruption.
Nicolas Sarkozy's personal lawyer, Thierry Herzog, was meanwhile enlisted to help in the Senussi case – he went to Tripoli for this purpose at the end of 2005 – and a meeting took place on the subject at the Élysée in May 2009, as shown by several documents recovered during the investigation.
An arrest warrant against Takieddine
At each stage of the alleged corruption plan – the secret negotiations, payments, the trade-offs – it was Ziad Takieddine who, during the period 2005-2009, played the role of the Sarkozy team's envoy. He organised all the meetings, did the translations and carried messages, opened offshore bank accounts at the other end of the world, and received funds and then distributed them – keeping some for himself.
With the aid of bank documents the investigation has thus established that on top of the nearly half million euros sent to Gaubert, which was withdrawn in cash then taken into France via various secret accounts, Ziad Takieddine had received 1.2 million euros sent in advance by the Gaddafi regime, most of it before the 2007 presidential campaign.
On September 27th 2022 the judges in the Libyan affair finally decided to issue an international arrest warrant for Ziad Takieddine.
Everyone knows where he is. The businessman has been in refuge in Beirut in Lebanon, the country of his birth, ever since he was handed a five year prison sentence over the Karachi affair (another case involving secret funding and foreign countries, in that case Saudi Arabia and Pakistan).
This arrest warrant has in effect produced a whole new set of offences the middleman is suspected of, on top of the allegations he already faced. Takieddine is now under investigation for “collusion in the illegal funding of an election campaign”, “collusion in corruption”, “collusion in the misappropriation of public money”, “money laundering” and “criminal conspiracy”.
The details of the new allegations for which he is under investigation illustrate the full breadth of the Libyan affair.
Ziad Takiedine is said to have participated “in Paris, on national territory and equally in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Panama, Libya and Lebanon, since 2005 and in any case since a point in time not covered by prescription [editor's note, in other words not so long ago as to be ruled out under any statute of limitations], ….in an organised group or as part of an established understanding in readiness for the preparation – characterised by one or several material acts – of crimes punishable by 10 years imprisonment, namely in this particular case:
- the misappropriation of public money carried out by a public agent to the prejudice of the Libyan state
- the crimes of active and passive corruption with public money
- and the laundering of the proceeds of these crimes
namely, by having acted as an unofficial intermediary between the Libyan state and Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign team, in particular with Brice Hortefeux, treasurer of Nicolas Sarkozy's support association and minister for the regions (attached to the Ministry of the Interior), Claude Guéant, chief of staff to the minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy, director of presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign team; by having organised confidential meetings in France, in Libya, in private and official places (the Ministry of the Interior, at his home, at Abdullah Senussi's home, in Libya, in hotels); and with Thierry Gaubert, unofficial supporter of Nicolas Sarkozy, by having acted to obtain or attempt to obtain financial support in order to finance Nicolas Sarkozy's electoral campaign; by arranging meetings with official associates of Muammar Gaddafi such as Abdullah Senussi and Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, during official trips but in a confidential manner and not in the presence of the official French authorities; by having organised the transfer of public funds from Libya to France; by having organised payments via accounts and cash; by having taken part in the negotiation of diplomatic trade-offs (the return of Libya on the international scene, inviting Muammar Gaddafi to France), economic trade-offs (in particular a contract for surveillance equipment for Libyan territory, a commitment over civil nuclear, a contract to extract oil/Total [editor's note, the French oil multinational]), and legal trade-offs (a promise to lift the arrest warrant against Abdullah Senussi)”.
It is further alleged that “from the month of October 2005 and since a time not covered by prescription” Takieddine was “an accomplice in the crime of illegally funding an electoral campaign of which Nicolas Sarkozy is suspected, by helping him or knowingly helping him to prepare and carry it out, in this instance by handing over sums of money in cash to the candidate and to his campaign director before and during the electoral campaign for the 2007 presidential election”.
In the twelve years that Mediapart has been writing about this affair, Nicolas Sarkozy has not once wished to respond to our questions. Like all the people under investigation in the case, the former president benefits from a presumption of innocence.
Now that the judges' investigation is officially finished, it is down to the financial crimes prosecution unit, the Parquet National Financier (PNF), to deliver its final view as to how the matter should proceed. The case will then come back to the investigating judges to decide whether those under investigation should be sent for trial or not. If it does come to court, it could be one of the greatest political-financial trials of recent decades in France.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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