Former French interior minister Claude Guéant was taken into custody on Friday in connection with the alleged financing by Moamer Kadhafi’s Libya of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, reports RFI.
Guéant, who was Sarkozy’s right-hand man for 10 years, faces questioning by financial crimes investigators over 500,000 euros paid into his account, which he has claimed came from the sale of a 17th-century Flemish painting to a Malaysian lawyer.
Charges that Sarkozy’s successful presidential bid received funding from Kadhafi’s Libya surfaced in the 2012 election campaign, which he lost, when the Mediapart website published alleged evidence of it.
Sarkozy claims that the documents are fakes.
An inquiry into corruption and influence-peddling was opened in 2013.
The detention is the third time Guéant has found himself in the cells.
Read more of this report from RFI.
Read Mediapart's stories on the Libyan funding story here and here, and the background to the Guéant allegations here.