Former president Nicolas Sarkozy has told judges investigating claims his 2007 election campaign was part-funded by Libya that he cannot now provide them with his official diaries from that period, despite having agreed to do so, Mediapart has learnt.
It was at the start of October this year that the ex-head of state told the judges that, in a bid to do “anything that can contribute to the truth being shown”, he would hand over the diaries they want to examine as part of the investigation into the alleged illicit funding by Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
But Mediapart understands that the former president's lawyer has just informed the judges that he is in fact unable to provide them with any of the diaries concerned as he cannot locate them.
By coincidence, this admission comes just as Nicolas Sarkozy stands trial in Paris on charges of corruption and influence peddling in a separate case, but one in which the same diaries are also involved. In that trial the former president is accused by prosecutors of having tried to bribe a senior magistrate to discover the fate of the diaries, which were then in the hands of other judges. They had been consulted by investigating judges as part of the high-profile Bettencourt affair, and were going to be handed over for examination in other cases too, including the Tapie affair involving businessman Bernard Tapie. This prospect clearly worried the former president.
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So in summary, this was the situation: while the current corruption trial suggests that Nicolas Sarkozy was ready to go to some lengths to get the diaries returned to him – which eventually happened – it appears from the Libyan funding affair that he has now inadvertently mislaid them.
During questioning former president had expressed some concerns to the judges about handing over the diaries. He was apparently worried that all the diaries would be handed over to the investigation and that they would thus all be accessible to a third party. In a bid to tackle Nicolas Sarkozy's concerns, the judges suggested that they organise a special hearing in which they would only keep copies of those extracts that were likely to interest their investigation. They would then hand all the diaries back to the ex-head of state once the hearing was over. To which the latter replied: “Yes, that's possible.”
A date, November 13th, was fixed to do this. But what had once been “possible” and even an ardent desire of the president suddenly no longer was. His lawyer Thierry Herzog sent an email on November 10th to Judge Aude Buresi telling her: “Mr Sarkozy has tasked me with informing you that he is unfortunately unable to find these diaries, of which the oldest goes back 15 years, and that he therefore cannot satisfy your request.”
The judges, who recently put Nicolas Sarkozy under formal investigation for “conspiracy” in the Libyan funding affair, want to consult his official diaries from 2005 to 2009 in order to check, for example, whether or not he had compromising meetings with middleman Ziad Takieddine. They also want to know how often he met his close ally Thierry Gaubert, who has been placed under formal investigation for “conspiracy” too, and to examine any other information that might help clarify the investigation.
“We duly note that after carrying out a search, your client is not able to send his 2005 to 2009 diaries,” Judge Buresi replied on November 13th to Thierry Herzog, who is also on trial alongside Nicolas Sarkozy in the current corruption case. “However, it had appeared to us that they were still in his possession as during his questioning he had seemed certain that he had them and consented to us making use of them,” the judge added.
“Furthermore, they were still in his possession after he left the Élysée [editor's note, in 2012] as it appears that you spontaneously sent a copy of them to the investigating judge at Bordeaux in the context of what is known as the Bettencourt affair. Thereafter it appeared that these diaries were seized and returned, with only copied extracts remaining as part of [judicial] proceedings,” she told the former president's lawyer. She concluded : “It does not seem as if they have since been handed to the National Archives.”
In fact, back in July 2018 the Ministry of the Interior had told the judges investigating the Libyan case that Nicolas Sarkozy's 2005 to 2007 diaries had not been sent to the National Archives as was usually the case for former ministers of the interior, a post Sarkozy had occupied before becoming president.
All judges, detectives and prosecutors know the great value a diary can bring to a case as it contains two key elements in any investigation: a chronology and details of visits.
Former minister and close Sarkozy ally Brice Hortefeux - who gave judges in the Libyan case his diaries from 2005 to 2007 thinking they would help him show that he had not gone to Libya - knows all about what diaries can reveal. A line by line examination of those documents has since thrown up potential evidence against him, as Mediapart has reported.
In Nicolas Sarkozy's case, the diaries matter in relation to a number of issues and people in the Libyan funding affair. A key point in particular concerns a possible meeting he had at the Ministry of the Interior on January 28th 2007 with the businessman and intermediary Ziad Takiddine who, according to a confession he made in 2016, had handed over a suitcase of cash that day after returning from Tripoli.
The middleman, who is today financially ruined and on the run after his conviction in the Karachi affair, has partially retracted his confession in the media – in Paris Match magazine and on BFM TV – from Beirut where he is now staying. But he has not retracted it in front of French judges, who have been trying in vain to question him in recent days. He has now been arrested by the Lebanese authorities under an Interpol arrest warrant issued in connection with the Libyan funding investigation in France.
Citing a brief report published in the regional newspaper Vaucluse Matin which vaguely referred to his presence with his ex-wife at the L’Isle-sur-Sorgue market in the south of France on January 28th 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy had assured the judges that he had stayed in the south of France until the end of the day and thus could not have met Takieddine on the 28th. His diary, which he no longer has, was supposed to prove it.
Nicolas Sarkozy also insisted to the judges that he had travelled on that trip on a flight laid on by ETEC, the French state's aviation company. The investigation, however, showed that there had been no ETEC flight used at that date by Nicolas Sarkozy. The former head of state then suggested it could have been a flight in a private jet paid for out of election expenses – it was the start of 2007 and the presidential campaign was just about to get into its stride.
“Perhaps I can ask staff to research precisely how I returned, if it's still possible to find out and if the company exists. You ask me if I remember the name of the company that I used most frequently, I don't remember that but I can try to find out. In any case, that doesn't call into question the fact that I was there,” Nicolas Sarkozy told the judges.
As well as facing claims of “conspiracy” in the Libyan funding case, Nicolas Sarkozy is also under formal investigation in the affair for “illicit funding of an electoral campaign”, “receiving and embezzling public funds” and “passive corruption”. These four claims are based on a vast jigsaw puzzle of material evidence (secret meetings, offshore payments, use of cash, various quid pro quos) which when pieced together all point, according to the judicial investigation, in the direction of the same person: the former French president.
Nicolas Sarkozy himself denies any wrongdoing and has attacked what he calls a “plot” hatched against him.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter