Libyan funding: police find evidence in Élysée of bid to clear Gaddafi henchman
Investigators probing claims that the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi funded Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign have unearthed a key piece of evidence in the archives of the Élysée. It shows that on May 16th, 2009, the middleman Ziad Takieddine visited the Élysée to meet Sarkozy's right-hand man Claude Guéant. The object was to “set aside the arrest warrant” targeting Colonel Gaddafi's brother-in-law and security chief Abdullah Senussi, who had been convicted in absentia for his part in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airline DC10 passenger plane over Niger, in which 170 people lost their lives. There is growing suspicion that an agreement to resolve Senussi's situation was a key component of the Libyan funding corruption plot. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske.
PolicePolice have found evidence in the archives of the Élysée Palace concierge service which corroborate a key claim by the controversial middleman Ziad Takieddine concerning the Libyan funding of the 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy election campaign, Mediapart can reveal. The register of people who enter the building shows that Takieddine, at the time an intermediary between Sarkozy's entourage and Libya, entered the Élysée at 1.39pm on May 16th, 2009, for a meeting with Sarkozy's right-hand man Claude Guéant.