Judges investigating claims that Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in the Libya-Nicolas Sarkozy election funding affair, was induced to retract his evidence commissioned an IT specialist to retrieve deleted messages between some of the protagonists.
According to these telephone messages, detailed in several official reports that Mediapart has seen, Paris paparazzi boss Michèle 'Mimi' Marchand oversaw the alleged witness tampering operation from start to finish. This culminated in the autumn of 2020 with Takieddine's spectacular recanting of his key evidence in the Libyan funding affair, a retraction which featured simultaneously in Paris Match magazine and on BFMTV news channel.
The retrieved messages are also potentially embarrassing for Nicolas Sarkozy. They indicate that at the time of the events Michèle Marchand, who is close to both the Sarkozys and the Macrons, told her alleged accomplices that she was keeping the former president informed in real time of each stage of the Takieddine operation. The ex-head-of state was referred to by these alleged accomplices under several nicknames: “Zébulon”, the original French name for the jack-in-the-box character in the children's television programme 'The Magic Roundabout' (who was known as 'Zebedee' in the English version); “N” or “Inès”, which when pronounced in French sounds like the ex-president's initials, “NS”.
Indeed, the investigating judge, Vincent Lemonier, himself referred to Michèle Marchand's “reports about the operation to Zébulon” in a document dated August 22nd 2022.
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When approached by Mediapart, Michèle Marchand declined to comment, saying she would reserve her explanations for the investigating judge. Nicolas Sarkozy did not respond to requests for a comment either.
Since the start of the witness tampering affair Michèle Marchand has changed her version of events several times. In April 2021 she initially stated that she had “nothing to do” with Ziad Takieddine's “secrets”. Then in July 2021, after a month in temporary custody, she acknowledged to the judges that she had indeed been involved at several times with the false retraction, without however being the “prime mover in this saga”.
In his declarations in the autumn of 2020 the middleman Ziad Takieddine, who had previously made accusations against the former head of state, claimed that he had in fact been manipulated by a judge, Serge Tournaire, into wrongly accusing Nicolas Sarkozy over the Libyan funding affair. This about-face led to special programmes on news channels, interviews with people close to the former president stating that the Libyan election funding case had collapsed, and a triumphal statement from Nicolas Sarkozy who declared: “The truth has at last come out!”
It was the same story six weeks later when Paris Match published a new article under the headline: “Exclusive: Takieddine accuses the judges”. Co-written by the magazine's managing editor at the time, Hervé Gattegno, the article stated that Takieddine had confirmed his timely – from Nicolas Sarkozy's point of view - retraction to an official notary in Beirut in Lebanon.
I was at Zébulon's …
Takieddine's surprise retraction came at a very significant time; it took place just after Nicolas Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation for “conspiracy” in the Libyan funding affair, and just before the ex-president's trial for “corruption” and “influence peddling” in the so-called Bismuth affair.
But this fairy tale, which heaped scorn on an anti-corruption judge who is seen as the former president's bête noire – Serge Tournaire is today the leading investigative judge in the financial crimes unit based at the Paris courts – did not stand up to scrutiny for long. After investigating the background to this non-scoop, and following revelations by Mediapart, detectives and Judge Lemonier unearthed evidence of what they now consider to be “witness tampering” and “conspiracy”.
In summary, it appears to have been a witness statement that was bought – according to the investigation money was paid in Lebanon – to the ultimate benefit of the former French president. The latter also tried – in vain - to exploit the issue legally in a bid to escape the clutches of the Libyan election funding case.
A total of eight people have now been placed under investigation in the witness tampering case. Among them are Michèle 'Mimi' Marchand; a notorious hustler close to certain police circles, Noël Dubus; and a prominent entrepreneur, David Layani, who has connections with people close to Nicolas Sarkozy, President Emmanuel Macron and French interior minister Gérald Darmanin.
All those placed under investigation are presumed innocent.
While the justice system makes progress in its investigations, a picture has emerged of a curious collection of adventurers from different walks of life who seem to have come together to get involved in this 'scoop'. Meanwhile in the background lurks the presence of someone absent from this group: Nicolas Sarkozy.
That, at any rate, is what emerges from a reading of the deleted messages – most of them on WhatsApp – which were extracted by the IT expert for the judicial investigation. From October 2020 onwards, in other words several weeks before Takieddine's retraction was published in Paris Match, several messages between Noël Dubus, the agent handling the middleman, and his alleged accomplices mentioned Nicolas Sarkozy.
On October 14th 2020, for example, someone close to Dubus lets him know that Michèle Marchand “is going to N's this evening … it's getting serious”. On October 31st the same correspondent wrote: “Mimi is seeing inès tomorrow evening.” Then on November 19th Dubus wrote to another alleged accomplice: “Mimi is very happy because Inès has every faith in me.” Two days later there was an issue about a phonecall that “Inès” had to make to another character in the Takieddine operation. Was this simply boastfulness by bit players who were winding each other up?
From this perspective, Michèle Marchand's messages are more important; her closeness to Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has been well documented for years. The messages in question, retrieved by the investigators, refer to a key moment in the Takieddine operation. This was in early December 2020, between the middleman's interview with Paris Match and the time when he was supposed to go and see a notary. This was in Beirut, where Takieddine had fled after being given a five-year jail term by a French court for his role in the Karachi affair.
According to the judicial investigation, the reason for getting Takieddine to make a written retraction in front of a public notary was to ensure it had a major impact on the Sarkozy-Libya funding legal case. The problem was that in between talking to Paris Match and his appointment with the notary, Takieddine was arrested in Lebanon on a separate, local issue. This panicked Michèle Marchand, as shown by a message sent to an alleged accomplice: “You do realise that it's all falling apart over there!!”
The person she was messaging asked Mimi Marchand to “reassure Zébulon”. The paparazzi boss replied that she had some alarming news. “[Takieddine] is in custody and he'll stay there unless there's a miracle … I await your call but those close to Zébulon have the same catastrophic information as me.” This suggests that the Sarkozy clan were keeping a close eye on the situation.
Michéle Marchand also insisted to those with whom she was messaging that she had an emergency meeting arranged with “Z”, meaning Zébulon. She said she was convinced that Nicolas Sarkozy was going to ask the entrepreneur David Layani – the two men both sat on the board of directors at the casino and luxury hotel group Barrière - not to pay any money to finance the operation. “I have a meeting with Z at 7.30pm and I'm certain that he'll tell me to STOP and that he'll stop Layani … that's what I'd do in his position,” Marchand wrote.
“Call me, I had my meeting,” Michéle Marchand wrote to an alleged accomplice a few hours later. According to the investigation it seems that in the end the former president had not issued any such edict. In the following days more than 70,000 euros were reportedly paid by David Layani to Michéle Marchand's company Bestimage for a non-existent service. Noël Dubus later received some of the money. As for the written retraction, that took place in mid-December 2020 after Ziad Takieddine was freed from custody. Paris Match even published a photo of him signing the document.
When questioned about the content of these messages, Michèle Marchand declined to comment, pointing out that she is waiting to be questioned by the investigating judge. David Layani's lawyers Mathias Chichportich and Christian Saint-Palais explained that “investigations carried out for a year show that our client was unaware of” the plan that was hatched and that “his name has constantly been exploited in this case” (see the Black Box below for full details of their response).
As Mediapart has already reported, a third stage of the Takieddine operation was planned, this one even more daring than the previous steps. This plan was to corrupt local judges and free one of Muammar Gaddafi's sons from custody in Lebanon. The ultimate aim was to get the former dictator's family to exonerate Nicolas Sarkozy over the Libyan election funding case.
During the talks about this third stage, Michèle Marchand once again spoke in her WhatsApp messages about meetings with the former president. In April 2021, for example, she wrote to an alleged accomplice: “I was at Zébulon's house...” On April 25th she wrote again: “I have to see you at the end of the day, I'm dining at Z's...”
Then on May 27th she sent another message, one which has already been made public:“For the first time Z was not the friendliest, telling me that it won't work … that they won't pay the Gs [editor's note, the Gaddafis] and that it's taking too long there … I saw him for 30 minutes. Irritated!” In the end, unlike the Takieddine retraction, the operation to free Gaddafi's son failed.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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