Nicolas Sarkozy is now formally placed under investigation in two separate and wide-reaching cases of fraud and corruption.
This week he was placed under investigation for his suspected role in a system of false invoicing that hid the vast overspending of his failed 2012 re-election bid, when the legally-imposed ceiling on spending by candidates was overshot by at least 18 million euros.
Since July 2014, Sarkozy, 61, is also formally under investigation in a separate for corruption, influence peddling and the violation of the confidentiality of a judicial investigation. This involves his alleged attempt to gain information about the progress of the investigation into the so-called Bettencourt affair, a vast corruption case centred on the entourage of L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt (see further below).
Police phone taps of Sarkozy’s mobile phone recorded conversations between him and his personal lawyer, Thierry Herzog, which revealed how Sarkozy promised to help a senior magistrate, Gilbert Azibert, hoping to be appointed to a coveted post in Monaco in exchange for the latter’s help in passing on confidential information on the Bettencourt case.
Sarkozy returned to active politics in 2014 when he was elected president of the conservative UMP party, renamed last year as Les Républicains (LR), in a long-term strategy to become the party’s candidate for the 2017 presidential elections. But he faces strong competition in primary elections to be held later this year, which opinion polls currently predict will be one by his arch rival Alain Juppé. Sarkozy’s worsening legal woes could soon be the knockout blow to his ambitions, notably the case involving the alleged corruption of Gilbert Azibert in which, if he is sent for trial and found guilty, he could be stripped of his right to stand in an election.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Meanwhile, another judicial investigation continues into the suspected illegal financing of his 2007 presidential election campaign by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
While Sarkozy becomes ever more deeply engulfed in the corruption cases, he is shadowed by a clan of political allies past and present, including former ministers, police officials, senior civil servants, lawyers, businessmen and advisors, whose own criminal records and legal difficulties trace the history of a political-financial system that is unequalled under the 5th Republic.
Against the catalogue of judicial investigations opened into “corruption”, “influence peddling”, “money laundering”, “favouritism” and “fraud”, only two conclusions emerge: either Nicolas Sarkozy and all those who are, or were, part of the Sarkozy system are victims of the largest judicial plot and victimisation in the history of France, or that system can be summed up in the words of the late French actor Jean Gabin in Henri Verneuil’s 1961 film Le Président: “It’s not a party, it’s a union of self-interests.”
Mediapart has drawn up a list of 32 of Sarkozy’s close allies implicated in criminal investigations. Many of them are complex affairs, and several were first revealed by Mediapart (the list continues on page 2).
The “Bygmalion affair” is centred on the use that was made of an events and PR firm of the same name to supply falsified invoices to Sarkozy’s UMP party to hide the vast overspending - above the legally established ceiling - during his 2012 presidential election campaign. The judicial investigation is ongoing. Those implicated include prefect Guillaume Lambert (Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign director), conservative MEP Jérôme Lavrilleux (deputy campaign director), lawyer Philippe Blanchetier (head of the campaign funding association), Philippe Briand (campaign treasurer), Éric Césari (former director-general of Sarkozy’s UMP party), Fabienne Liadzé (former UMP director of finances) and Pierre Chassat (UMP communications director).
The “Karachi affair” centres on a vast and complex system by which commissions paid in sales of French weapons abroad were secretly returned to France for what investigating magistrates suspect was the building of a war chest for former French prime minister Edouard Balladur’s 1995 presidential election campaign. Nicolas Sarkozy was then budget minister and Balladur’s election campaign spokesman. Those implicated in the investigation are Thierry Gaubert (a former ministerial advisor to Sarkozy when he was budget minister), businessman Nicolas Bazire (a former chief of staff for Balladur when the latter was prime minister, and whose longstanding friendship with Sarkozy was illustrated when he served as best man at Sarkozy’s marriage with Carala Bruni in 2008), and arms broker Ziad Takieddine (a Paris-based Lebanese businessman).
Another ongoing judicial investigation is into the suspected misuse of public funds and favouritism in the commissioning of opinion polls by the French presidential office during Sarkozy’s 2007-2012 term of office. The polls, of questionable public interest, were assigned to firms without any prior public tender. Those implicated in the case include Patrick Buisson (former presidential communications advisor), Emmanuelle Mignon (former senior official of the presidential office), Julien Vaulpré (Sarkozy’s former “opinion” advisor), Pierre Giacometti (head of an opinion survey firm), Jean-Marie Goudard (advertising excutive and the inventor of Sarkozy’s campaign slogan“Ensemble, tout devient possible” – meaning “Together, everything becomes possible”).
In another case that has become known as Kazakhgate, centring on suspected corruption and influence peddling in a sale of helicopters to Kazakhstan which was supervised by Sarkozy’s presidential office, those implicated are the former Senator and personal representative of Sarkozy’s, Aymeri de Montesquiou, and Jean-François Étienne des Rosaies, Sarkozy’s former diplomatic advisor.
'We're purging the system': Nicolas Sarkozy in 1995
In the so-called "Bismuth affair", Nicolas Sarkozy is under investigation for suspected corruption, influence peddling and violation of the secrecy of a judicial investigation. The case, as already related above, involves Sarkozy’s alleged attempt, via a senior appeals court magistrate, to gain confidential information about the progress of the Bettencourt cases, in exchange for Sarkozy’s personal intervention in favour of the magistrate in his bid for a prestigious post in Monaco. The case is called the Bismuth affair after the false name - that of Paul Bismuth – under which one of Sarkozy’s mobile phones was registered and on which he was heard in phone taps detailing the manoeuvre. Sarkozy’s personal lawyer Thierry Herzog is also implicated for his role as go-between, as well as the senior magistrate, Gilbert Azibert.
Another case is that of the 404 million euros awarded out of public funds to French tycoon Bernard Tapie in 2008. Tapie, a maverick figure who was a former minister under the presidency of François Mitterrand, lent his support to Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign. Soon after Sarkozy’s election, a longstanding legal battle between Tapie and the French state was placed into private arbitration. The dispute centred on the mandated sale by the now-defunct state-owned Crédit Lyonnais bank of Tapie’s business assets, notably his controlling share of the Adidas sportswear and accessory company, in the early 1990s. Tapie claimed he had been spoliated by the bank. The decision to place the case into private arbitration was in Tapie’s interest, and the disturbing conflicts of interest among the arbitration panel led to a legal decision last year to overturn the award, which Tapie must now pay back. Last December, the former finance minister who backed the private arbitration, now International Monetary Fund chief, Christine Lagarde, was charged with “negligence” and will stand trial before a special court dedicated to judging misdeeds by members of government.
The "Bettencourt affair"is a vast case centred on the entourage of L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and which was heard in court last year in two separate trials. Nine defendants were convicted for taking advantage of the dementia-suffering multi-billionaire, Europe’s wealthiest woman, who is now aged 93. The courts heard the extraordinary detail of how a disparate group of defendants, including high-society dandies, wealth managers, lawyers, solicitors and a former minister, gravitated around Bettencourt’s fortune, as first revealed by Mediapart in 2010. Before the charges were brought, Sarkozy was himself initially placed under investigation on suspicion of obtaining illegal cash sums from Bettencourt for his 2007 election campaign. The case against him was later dropped for lack of evidence, although magistrates denounced his “manifestly abusive behaviour”.
Sarkozy’s former budget minister, Eric Woerth, who was also earlier his 2007 presidential election campaign treasurer, was sent for trial but cleared of charges relating to the alleged cash donations and another charge of influence peddling. Meanwhile, Bettencourt’s former wealth and investment manager, Patrice de Maistre, once a member of the club of wealthy donators (the Premier Cercle) to Sarkozy’s UMP party, was given a 30-month jail sentence for his extensive “abuse” of, and personal gain from, Liliane Bettencourt’s mental frailty. Stéphane Courbit,a media businessman close to Sarkozy, was given a 250,000-euro fine for taking advantage of Bettencourt’s dementia to obtain her investment of 144 milion euros in one of his companies.
Longstanding Sarkozy allies Patrick Balkany and his wife Isabelle Balkany are the target of an ongoing investigation into suspected tax evasion and corruption. Patrick Balkany is a Member of Parliament for a constituency in Levallois-Perret, a suburb west of Paris, of which he is also mayor, and his wife deputy mayor. Sarkozy’s partner over many years in a legal practice (Claude & Sarkozy), Paris lawyer Arnaud Claude, has also been placed under investigation on suspicion of taking part in establishing the off-shore tax evasion structures of the Balkany couple.
Another longstanding ally of Sarkozy’s is Claude Guéant. He served as Sarkozy’s presidential chief of staff (and had been chief of staff to Sarkozy throught his 2002-2007 ministerial career) and was later made interior minister. Guéant was last year given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 75,000 euros for misusing public funds when he was chief of staff to Sarkozy when the latter was interior minister. Guéant had regularly taken cash for his own gain (and that of three others among his staff) from a fund that was supposed to finance police surveillance operations. Another Sarkozy ally, police prefect Michel Gaudin, now Sarkoy’s chief of staff, was given a 10-month suspended jail sentence for supplying Guéant with the cash. Guéant remains under investigation in a judicial probe into the suspected financing, as first revealed by Mediapart, of Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Bernard Squarcini, who during Sarkozy’s presidency was head of the French domestic intelligence agency, the DCRI, is another of the president’s close entourage. In 2014, he was found guilty of having illegally gained access to the records of phone calls made by a journalist with French daily Le Monde.
French industrialist Serge Dassault, also close to Sarkozy, remains under investigation for suspected illegal political funding and vote-rigging via cash payments in Corbeil-Essones, close to Paris, when he was mayor of the town. Another Sarkozy stalwart, prefect Alain Gardère, is also under investigation for corruption while director of the French national agency overseeing the activities of the private security industry, CNAPS. Meanwhile, art dealer Guy Wildenstein, a former representative of Sarkozy’s UMP party in the United States where his business is based, was sent for trial on tax evasion and money laundering charges. The trial opened in January but was immediately suspended over his appeal on a procedural matter.
Although not included in the above-named 32, it is nevertheless worthy of note that Sarkozy’s former diplomatic advisor Boris Boillon, who Sarkozy appointed as French ambassador to Iraq and later Tunisia, was arrested at the Gare du Nord station in Paris in July 2013 when he was found in possession of 350,000 euros in cash. Boillon, who was attempting to mount a Thalys train for Brussels and who should by law have declared the sum to customs authorities, was never placed under investigation.
In 1995, a book of conversations between Sarkozy and French journalist Michel Denisot was published under the title Au bout de la passion, l’équilibre (meaning, roughly translated, At the end of passion is balance). When the book was published, Sarkozy was budget minister under the premiership of his political mentor, Edouard Balladur. Sarkozy told Denisot of his grave concerns about the lack of probity in French political circles which had been then recently rocked by a series of corruption cases. “For the first time in a very long while in French political history [criminal] affairs are coming to light,” he is quoted as saying. “Never has a government has left the justice authorities to act with such independence. We are in the process of purging the system. This should result in a greater confidence in our institutions.”
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The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse