Sarkozy's 500,000-euro fine for undeclared campaign expenses paid, his allies announce his return

WhileWhile maintaining a ‘will he, won’t he’ suspense over whether and when he will announce his return to politics and a bid to retake the Elysée Palace, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was faced with a major hurdle he had first to overcome with the payment more than 500,000 euros in fines that followed the rejection of his 2012 presidential campaign spending accounts.

Mediapart has learnt that the fines against Sarkozy were settled just one month after they were notified to him, although it remains unclear whether these were paid by him personally or by his party, the conservative UMP.

Since his defeat to François Hollande in presidential elections in May, 2012, Sarkozy has stayed on the political sidelines, making a lucrative living out of his reconversion as a speaker at international conferences, while keeping a distance from what has been a long period of divisive battles fought out by leading figures of the UMP.    

But the well-orchestrated mystery over Sarkozy’s possible return to politics has now been at least partially lifted by the wife of former president Jacques Chirac. Pressed during a studio interview on Europe 1 radio station on Wednesday morning, Bernadette Chirac, an important symbolic ally of Sarkozy’s, was asked whether he would stand in the next presidential elections due in 2017. “Ah, but I’ve been prohibited from saying,” she at first answered, before being asked if that indeed meant he would launch a bid. “Well, obviously,” she then replied.

Sarkozy, 59, was last September ordered to pay both a 363,615-euro fine for exceeding the official allowance for his campaign expenses, and a further 153,000-euro fine which was the refund of an advance for campaigning expenses that was allocated to him at the start of the campaign - and paid from the public purse.

In France, state-refundable presidential election campaign spending is capped at 22.5 million euros. Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign accounts reported a total spending of 21,339,664 euros, just short of the ceiling. But in December 2012 they were rejected by the official campaign funding and spending watchdog, the Commission des comptes de campagne et des financements politiques (CNCCFP), on the basis that he had hidden spending which, when added to the declared total, amounted to 466,118 euros more than the authorised amount.

At the time, Sarkozy's camp firmly rejected the CNCCFP's "unprecedented" conclusions. "I formally contest the CNCCFP's analysis and decisions," said Sarkozy's campaign treasurer Philippe Briand in a statement.

It was the first time ever that the campaign accounts of a candidate who reached the second and final round of the French presidential contest had been rejected. Already, as Mediapart has revealed in a series of investigations, funding of Sarkozy’s successful 2007 presidential election campaign has been placed in question by evidence suggesting it was partly illegally financed by both late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and by l’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and her late husband André.

The fines handed to Sarkozy last September were the epilogue to much more costly penalties imposed for the same reasons on the conservative UMP party for which he was candidate. Acting on the CNCCFP’s conclusions, the Constitutional Council last year ordered the party to pay back 10.6 million euros of public money it had received as an advance for the campaign costs.

Last September, the UMP, which was initially threatened with bankruptcy by the fine, announced that a special two-month fundraising campaign, dubbed by the media as ‘the Sarkothon’ (after the term telethon used for charity fundraising programmes on television), had brought in 11 million euros in donations.

That same month, the French finance ministry issued the fines to Sarkozy (see below), who settled them just one month later, on October 31st. The information was obtained by a noted campaigner for political transparency, Raymond Avrillier, who submitted a claim for them to the French public finances directorate citing the terms of a 1978 law on access to information.

His initial attempt to access documents relating to the fines was refused by a senior finance ministry civil servant, Bruno Bézard, who claimed they were protected from public scrutiny by rules of ‘professional confidentiality’. Avrillier then took appealed the rebuttal before the official commission that rules on access to administrative documents as set out under the 1978 law, the Commission d’accès aux documents administratifs (Cada), which found in his favour. He was finally presented with the information on January 16th.

The question remains over who paid Sarkozy’s fines. His UMP party last autumn made known that it would happily pick up the tab.

After a report by French investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné that UMP party chairman Jean-François Copé, himself regarded as an undeclared presidential hopeful, had refused to pay the more than half a million euros, Copé’s chief-of-staff, Jérôme Lavrilleux, issued a formal denial in an interview with news weekly Le Point. “The 11 million euros that we have collected cover everything,” said Lavrilleux. “We are taking everything in the party’s charge. Nicolas Sarkozy will pay nothing from his own pocket.”

Just how much Sarkozy’s campaign irregularities have cost the party and himself remains unclear. The Canard enchaîné, reacting to the comments by Lavrilleux, noted that if the UMP paid fines issued in Sarkozy’s name, this should be declared in the latter’s 2013 income tax returns and, if so, could well result in a higher tax bill.  

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English version by Graham Tearse