Two of former president Nicolas Sarkozy's closest allies, Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant, were both placed under formal investigation for “criminal conspiracy” in December 2020 over claims that the ex-head of state's 2007 election was part-funded by the Libyan regime. Mediapart can now reveal details of what both men told the judges who are investigating the case. We can also reveal how those judges were able to highlight the many weaknesses in their accounts.
When faced with the evidence gathered by detectives and judges during seven years of investigation, the two former interior minsters ultimately acknowledged lapses of judgement over whom they met in the Libyan regime and the middlemen they dealt with. But both still insist that there was no covert financing, either politically or personally, according to the transcripts of the questioning seen by Mediapart.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
And at the same time Brice Hortefeux and Claude Guéant were careful to spare their former boss Nicolas Sarkozy in their statements. Yet the former head of state, who is under formal investigation in the case for both “corruption” and “criminal conspiracy”, had criticised their actions when he was questioned by the same judges, Aude Buresi and Marc Sommerer, a few weeks earlier.
One key episode in the Libyan case in particular has highlighted the weaknesses of Brice Hortefeux's and Claude Guéant's accounts, weaknesses that both the judges and prosecutors from the financial crimes prosecution unit the Parquet National Financier (PNF) made the most of. This was the meeting that each of them held separately in 2005 with a senior figure from the Libyan state and convicted terrorist who was wanted by the French authorities. At the time both men were working directly for France's interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The man in question was Gaddafi’s brother-in-law Mohamed Abdullah Senussi, who as head of one of the dictator's main intelligence agencies was an all-powerful guardian of the regime's secrets. But in the eyes of the French justice system Senussi was also a terrorist who had been convicted in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for being the chief organiser of the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airline DC10 plane, in which 170 people lost their lives, including 54 French nationals.
At the time that Claude Guéant met him on October 1st 2005 and Brice Hortefeux a few months later on December 21st - on both occasions at his home in Tripoli and amid great secrecy - Senussi had been the subject of an international arrest warrant for six years following his conviction by a special criminal court in Paris. In short, he was a man wanted by France. And his legal situation was an enormous obstacle for the Libyan regime which at the time was trying to shed its image as a terrorist state.
The meetings between first Guéant and then Hortefeux with Senussi were held without the knowledge of the French diplomatic representatives in Libya, who were not told about them either before or after they took place. No accredited security official, diplomat or interpreter sat in on the meetings. The only other person present was the middleman Ziad Takieddine, who was recently convicted in the 'Karachi affair' for having carried bags of dirty money on behalf of supporters of former prime minister Édouard Balladur in the 1990s.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
Investigators in the Libyan case have meanwhile established that following his meetings with Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, Senussi carried out secret transfers of Libyan money of which half a million euros went into the Bahamas account of a man called Thierry Gaubert. This long-standing Sarkozy aide and ally was also recently convicted in the Karachi affair.
The investigating judges today suspect that Sarkozy's allies promised to nullify the arrest warrant against Senussi in return for the money that was paid. Several authenticated documents and witness accounts indicate that some discussion about how this might happen took place between 2005 and 2009, including during a meeting at the Élysée under Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency.
When questioned by the judges Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux had great difficulty in justifying their secret meeting with Abdullah Senussi. Each suggested that they had been the victim of a “trap” set by Ziad Takieddine; a trap that had apparently been sprung on two separate occasions, three months apart. The judges did not appear convinced.
“I had no detailed knowledge of Abdullah Senussi's situation and I didn't know that I was going to meet him,” said Claude Guéant, who was then chief of staff at the Ministry of the Interior, and who had been director of the national police force.
“I didn't know the details of his conviction and, to be precise, I was totally unaware of the existence of the international arrest warrant against him,” was Brice Hortefeux's similar statement.
Several senior figures in French intelligence, Pierre Bousquet de Florian and Alain Juillet, and a member of the diplomatic unit at the Élysée, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, have said in evidence that it was hard to imagine that a chief of staff such as Claude Guéant or a minister such as Brice Hortefeux were not warned in advance about holding such a meeting and the risks that it would represent.
But Guéant and Hortefeux each said their meeting with Senussi was “unexpected”, private and outside their official programme - though they nonetheless agreed to take it. One problem from Claude Guéant's point of view, however, is that he did not say a word about what he called an “ambush” to anyone after it had taken place. “Quite honestly I don't remember,” he told the judges.
A prosecutor from the PNF who was present at the questioning then pointed out to the former chief of staff at the Ministry of the Interior that this was not just any unforeseen encounter but a meeting with a convicted terrorist who was wanted by France. “Yes, I fully realise the importance and extreme seriousness of the events which led to Abdullah Senussi's conviction. I am simply saying that I was not aware that I was going to meet him, that I was not therefore very well prepared, that I didn't know the case very well. The question was: was I going to make a scene? Obviously not,” replied Claude Guéant.
“I don't remember if I spoke about it to my minister [editor's note, Nicolas Sarkozy],” said Guéant. He could also not recall if he had alerted the French intelligence services to his “misadventure”. He told the judges: “It's possible but frankly I don't have a detailed memory of it.”
Enlargement : Illustration 3
The judges picked up on an apparent problem in Claude Guéant's version of events. If, as he claimed, Ziad Takieddine had sprung a trap that made him run the risk of holding a meeting with a state terrorist wanted by his own intelligence services, why had he continued to meet regularly with the middleman later, as the investigation had shown? “It wasn't that I was happy about it and I let him [editor's note, Takieddine] know that, but from my point of view it wasn't a sufficient reason to close the door on him,” said Guéant.
Sarkozy' former right-hand man spoke of the middleman as a “useful contact”. He told the judges: “You could consider the fact that I listened to Ziad Takieddine as shameful but that's my way of doing things.” Everything was done in “France's interests”, he said. But Claude Guéant conceded: “I would say that with hindsight I today consider that it was extremely regrettable that I met Abdullah Senussi.”
The idea that Ziad Takieddine had laid a “trap” was also picked up by Brice Hortefeux when he was questioned. Nicolas Sarkozy's friend from teenage days insisted that Claude Guéant had not warned him about the ambush into which he had fallen in Tripoli in exactly the same circumstances. Yet the two men worked at the same ministry and both reported directly to Nicolas Sarkozy.
Brice Hortefeux said that he was taken from a cocktail reception to Senussi's home in Tripoli where Ziad Takieddine, a close acquaintance of his, was waiting for him. “In all sincerity I have to say that I was only half surprised, because I knew that he was there,” said Hortefeux, whose closeness to Takieddine has been confirmed by former ministerial drivers.
When he was questioned by judges in the case Abdullah Senussi himself said that his confidential meetings at the end of 2005 with Nicolas Sarkozy's two principal lieutenants were the occasions on which discussions took place over secret payments ahead of the 2007 presidential election. This is what Ziad Takieddine also confirmed at the time.
But according to Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux the discussions in those meetings with Senussi were about entirely different matters. Guéant said he and the Libyan had discussed general matters relating to Franco-Libyan relations. Hortefeux recalled a discussion about migration, a subject which neither Takieddine nor Senussi had any responsibility for. Nor did Hortefeux himself, as his position at the Ministry of the Interior was local government minister.
Like Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux had not subsequently alerted anyone in his delegation or the embassy to his meeting with a wanted terrorist. “I was not going to advertise it when I had the feeling that I'd fallen into a trap … today I realise the great damage that I have suffered as a result of this meeting,” he told the judges. “What I'm telling you clearly tells against me,” he said, pleading a lack of government experience back in 2005.
“This unexpected meeting was suspect, Abdullah Senussi's name was unknown to me but I understood the level of his responsibility after my return, not in advance, for otherwise this meeting would not have taken place,” he insisted. But once again, despite its serious nature, this “trap” does not appear to have had any consequences; neither on Franco-Libyan relations nor on relations between Sarkozy's inner circle and Ziad Takieddine. This is despite the fact that, according to the two men, it was the Machiavellian middleman who set up the two “ambushes”.
Brice Hortefeux encountered other setbacks in his version of events when questioned by the judges. First of all, he insisted that his ministerial security officer, Christian C., had been with him at the meeting with Senussi, something the security officer denied to investigators. Secondly, his own chief of staff, Thierry Coudert, told investigators that he was kept away from the organisation of the Libyan trip in 2005 even though in his view he “should have been informed of it”. Thirdly, the judges recalled the fact that the ambassador to France at the time of that trip, Jean-Luc Sibiude, told investigators that Brice Hortefeux's visit to Tripoli at the end of 2005 “did not make much sense”.
Evidence from bank transfers show that several weeks after Hortefeux's meeting with Abdullah Senussi the latter sent some 440,000 euros of Libyan money via Takieddine to a secret account in the Bahamas belonging to long-term Sarkozy loyalist Thierry Gaubert. Most of this money was later withdrawn in cash in France, before and after the 2007 presidential election.
Claude Guéant said he knew nothing about these funds. Brice Hortefeux did not hide his close friendship with Thierry Gaubert but said he knew very little about the latter's professional activities. “He's a discreet man,” Hortfeux said. Thierry Gaubert was convicted in 2012 over a housing funding case, and then last year in the Karachi affair and in a large tax fraud case. He is also under investigation for “criminal conspiracy” in the Libyan funding affair.
Brice Hortefeux said he regretted his regular meetings over the years with Ziad Takieddine, who had been introduced to him by Thierry Gaubert. “Perhaps it was a mistake? I've no idea. Or more accurately, the future went on to show that it was,” said Hortefeux. He then added: “When I met Ziad Takieddine he was a man who was well-established …. at the time he was seen, by me in any case, as someone respectable. Obviously looking back that was a mistake. Nicolas Sarkozy rebuked me over it once, I kick myself every day.”
Claude Guéant, meanwhile, seemed to think that Takieddine had manipulated the entire senior staff in the Ministry of the Interior under Nicolas Sarkozy as well as the merciless Libyan dictatorship, all strictly for his own personal gain. When questioned by the judges, Guéant suggested that during his meeting with Senussi in October 2005, Takieddine may even have deceived the Libya spy chief by referring in his translation to a request for political funding which had not been asked for. The aim apparently was for Takieddine to personally enrich himself by swindling the highest authorities in France – the country where he lived – and the Libyan dictatorship, which was renowned for its state terrorism. “It's feasible that Abdulla Senussi thought that it [editor's note, any money that Takieddine asked for] was to finance the campaign,” said Guéant.
This theory does not appear to have convinced the judges, who seemed irritated by the idea. “You keep on reproaching us for speculating, for delusions, for extrapolations that lend credence indiscriminately to a whole series of components that feature in the case and about which you dispute the slightest probative value,” the judges told Claude Guéant.
“In return,” they continued, “this is the answer that you give and that we have to verify: that Ziad Takieddine, though he controlled a fortune of 100s of millions of euros, supposedly defrauded the Libyan regime of five million euros by passing himself off as an unofficial intermediary tasked with financing the electoral campaign of the favourite in the presidential election. He apparently achieved his aims by manipulating you as he manipulated the the Libyans, by obtaining funds that he apparently kept and then continued, unnoticed, to carry on with his business affairs in the Arab world, the Middle East and and France, and to frequent the corridors of power not just in France but in Libya, where however his Libyan 'victims', who are known to be more than a little dangerous having been involved in particular in terrorist attacks and having little respect for human rights, might hold him to account. And in his defence Ziad Takieddine seemingly would not have hesitated to put the blame on the president of the Republic and some of his ministers by claiming they had got the 2007 election campaign financed by the Libyan regime. And he then makes these accusations in 2012, even though the Libyan regime is not in a position to cause harm [editor's note, Muammar Gaddafi's regime fell in 2011]. This is what is being suggested to us to enable us to understand the case.”
Claude Guéant, who also faces claims in the Libyan case that he personally benefited to the tune of 500,000 euros, claimed that this was an misrepresentation of his comments.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
