Ex-minister seeks to justify cash payments in Libyan election funding affair

FormerFormer minister Éric Woerth, who is today chairman of the influential finance committee at the National Assembly, sought to play down his role in the scandal involving Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign when questioned by judges investigating the affair. During the questioning on May 29th, 2018, Woerth, who was treasurer of that campaign, admitted he had handled anonymous cash donations in envelopes at the campaign headquarter while playing down the sums involved. But according to a transcript of the evidence seen by Mediapart, the former minister's explanations about the cash were often confused and have in reality weakened his own defence.

Éric Woerth, an MP for the conservative Les Républicains, has received the support of the ruling La République en Marche party despite being placed under formal investigation – one step short of charges being brought – for “complicity in illegal financing of an election campaign” in the affair. During questioning by the investigating judges Serge Tournaire and Aude Buresi, the MP himself chose to tackle head on the suspicions that surround his role in it. “I can see that you're thinking there was a lot of cash in this campaign,” he told them.

The judges, who have already put Nicolas Sarkozy under investigation for “illicit funding of an electoral campaign”, “receiving and embezzling public funds” and “passive corruption” in relation to the affair, found it hard to contradict the former campaign treasurer.

The investigation, which began back in 2013, has discovered the existence of Libyan money ahead of the 2007 election, in the form of cash and bank transfers to members of the former president's clan. They also found money in the form of a massive amount of undeclared cash that swirled around during the 2007 campaign itself. It is in relation to this latter money that Éric Woerth, whose job was to guarantee the scrupulousness of the candidate's accounts as treasurer, has been targeted by the investigating judges. According to the investigation Woerth is not on the list of Sarkozy supporters suspected of having negotiated secretly with the regime in Tripoli.

When confronted with the investigators' findings – an initial summary report was drawn up in September 2017 - the current chairman of the National Assembly's financial committee accepted the facts as presented. But he went to great lengths to play them down and distance himself from any suspicion of a link with the Libyan allegations. “I see no connection between the Libyan inquiry and these funds,” said Woerth from the start of his questioning.

So in his defence the conservative MP did all he could , as quickly as he could, to downplay what the police had unearthed in the investigation. While he accepted that there were cash funds, it was impossible to know the origin of them as they had been sent anonymously in the post by hidden donors. Nor were there major sums involved, simply a few thousand euros. That was in summary the basis of the evidence given by the MP. He described how during February and April 2007, either at the headquarters of the UMP – the predecessor right-wing party to Les Républicains – or the election campaign HQ they received up to around thirty thousand euros contained in around ten or so envelopes. Some of them were personally addressed to him. He said there were between 1,000 and 5,000 euros in each envelope.

According to the MP, this money was then put into safes before being distributed by hand in the form of an impromptu bonus payment to several members of the campaign team.

The problem with this version of the facts is that much of it collides with reality. Contrary to what Éric Woerth said, none of Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign team, including the person in charge of the post, remembers receiving anonymous cash by mail.

Even worse for his version of events, many former campaign workers have told the investigators about large sums of cash in circulation during the campaign, which does not tally with the thirty thousand or euros so talked about by Woerth. One witness even spoke about “hundreds of envelopes” being in the account safes. Another witness said it was known for sure that there would bonuses even before they signed their contracts, which undermines the idea that these payments were a surprise gift at the end of the campaign.

“I'm a little surprised at these declarations … that doesn't seem very reliable at all. I completely challenge this kind of testimony,” Éric Woerth told the judges.

Éric Woerth: 'I'm a big boy'

The former minister also stated that he had carried out no accounting procedure that would confirm the supposedly low sums of cash received at the time, and he could no longer recall to whom the money was given. He was also unable to explain the criteria by which the sums of cash were handed to particular people. “There were no scientific criteria … It was not determined in a rationalised way,” he said, preferring to speak of “criteria that I considered fair. I can't think of a better word.”

Éric Woerth was adamant when it came to the tax due on the cash sums paid out. “That wasn't an issue for me but for the people who got the gift,” he said. The judges asked him: “How could they have justified a cash gift occurring in these circumstances?” To which Woerth replied: “I didn't think about it.”

The judges then asked Woerth: “Did you keep the envelopes, was the handwriting [on them] always identical?” The former minister replied: “No, I threw the envelopes away. I don't remember the handwriting. I can no longer remember if it was always the same or not.” Éric Woerth also said there was “no” words with the cash in the envelopes.

“Have you thought about the logic of this behaviour?” asked the judges, clearly taken aback by the situation described by the campaign's treasurer. Leaning on his theory of anonymous donations that had sent through the post, Éric Woerth replied: “Yes … It was an extraordinarily enthusiastic campaign. There was an attractiveness to that campaign that there's never been since. There was an enthusiasm. I think there were people who wanted to give but who didn't want to reveal themselves. That could be community representatives, some people who gave to several candidates … I thought that at some point at the end of the campaign there might be someone who'd come forward and reveal themselves. But that wasn't the case.”

Though these cash payments were unusual, according to his own declarations Éric Woerth did not speak about them to the campaign director, Claude Guéant, or the candidate himself Nicolas Sarkozy. “I'm a big boy,” he told the judges, referring to it as a “micro-issue” which scarcely merited internal discussion. The only person who was aware of it, he said, was his deputy Vincent Talvas.

Éric Woerth then sought to demonstrate that the cash given to the campaign team members had no link with the presidential campaign itself. That was the reason why these sums did not appear in the campaign accounts and was not subject to the ad hoc accounts monitoring commission. “Frankly I didn't think that. You can ask me why I didn't think that. I have no idea. In my mind it was clear that this money wasn't connected to the campaign,” he said.

The judges wanted to know why Woerth had not spoken about the money. “It was difficult, practically. It involved cash. And I had the conviction that it didn't involve an electoral expense.”

The judges also asked the senior MP: “Dot you think that in the mind of the donor there was no link between their donation and the campaign?” Éric Woerth recognised that the “donor was giving in the context of a campaign” before giving an involved justification for his reasoning: that the money shared between members of the campaign team had been given out after the second round of voting, in other words after the campaign was over. The judges agreed but pointed out that the money had been handed over before the campaign's accounts had been lodged with the official election supervisory authorities.

In an earlier report, police officers investigating the affair had described Éric Woerth's explanations as “deceptive”, in other words seeking to deceive. Meanwhile, another theory has begun to emerge about the origin of the cash involved in the 2007 election campaign. As Mediapart has already revealed, Claude Guéant, Sarkozy's campaign director, who is suspected of having received several suitcases of Libyan cash, and of having bought a flat in Paris with money linked to Tripoli, rented a strong room at a branch of BNP bank in the Opéra district in central Paris during the election campaign amid great secrecy. He went there discreetly on seven occasions between March and July 2007.

Guéant, who has already been placed under formal investigation in the Libyan funding affair, insisted under questioning that he had rented this strong room – which was big enough for a man to stand up in – to keep secure items such as Nicolas Sarkozy's speeches. This version of events was a source of great amusement to former campaign staff when they were questioned about it. Though by all accounts the judges found it less amusing.

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• The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter