In July, Mediapart began the publication of a series of investigative articles (see list, left) about the very close and longstanding links between Franco-Lebanese arms dealer Ziad Takieddine and the inner circle of advisors and aides surrounding Nicolas Sarkozy - before and after he became French president. Takieddine is a key witness in an ongoing French judicial probe into suspected illegal party financing through commissions paid in a major French weapons sale, and Mediapart's revelations raise disturbing questions about other deals he was involved in. In a brief interview with Mediapart in July, Takieddine declared: "I'm a clean man and you're dirty. You're one of the filthy who are most productive in the muck." Here, Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel sets out the key issues exposed by the investigations, and argues why an unprecedented chain of high-level corruption is strangling France's institutions.
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Mediapart's series of revelations about arms dealer Ziad Takieddine, based on exclusive documents, unveil the truth about Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency. It is a dirty truth.
The central theme of the documents that we began publishing in early July is that of money made in the dark from arms sales. The documents in our possession expose a system in which financial gain is the only motivation, and it is made to the detriment of the laws of the land and public morals.
Such practices, and the temptation to engage in them, have always existed. The political-financial scandals of the presidencies of François Mitterrand (1981-1995) and Jacques Chirac (1995-2007) provide abundant proof of this. But never have they been established at the heart of power to such an extent, as attested by the central role played by Ziad Takieddine in the Sarkozy political machine and now revealed by Mediapart. Never before have they extended to the point of poisoning the pinnacle of the State, its rules of functioning, and its administrative procedures. In short, the Takieddine documents reveal the promotion of corruption at the heart of executive power in France.
With no other skill to offer than that of acting as an intermediary with authoritarian or dictatorial regimes which exchange business deals in return for diplomatic recognition, Mr. Takieddine has remained a member of Nicolas Sarkozy's inner circle since the period of 1994-1995. That was when he operated on the Pakistani contracts that lie at the heart of the scandal that has become known as the Karachi affair.
But the Franco-Lebanese businessman is more than a simple intermediary; he is also a secret advisor. He prepares confidential notes, plans secret strategies, takes part in meetings within government offices, offers political opinion and recommendations concerning international diplomacy, prepares meetings with foreign heads of state, organizes preparatory visits, translates highly sensitive documents from Arabic to French, acts as an unofficial go-between for official messages, and so on.
Since Nicolas Sarkozy's return to the international stage in 2002, the activities of this arms dealing intermediary made him a constant and a key player in the Sarkozy camp, whether that be when the latter was interior minister, or after he became president of France in 2007. That role was played out via Nicolas Sarkozy's principal administrative aide, Claude Guéant, the current French interior minister who was previously Mr. Sarkozy's irreplaceable ministerial principal private secretary and later his chief-of-staff of the presidential office.
As revealed by Mediapart since July, after his initial dealings with Pakistan, Mr. Takieddine turned his attentions to Saudi Arabia, then Libya, and Syria, and to his native country, the Lebanon. In each case, what was involved was the promotion of an accommodating, if not complicit, French foreign policy towards undemocratic regimes, many of which are now shaken by the movement of popular revolt that has become known as the Arab Spring. Among these regimes were notably the vilest of them all, those of Syria and Libya. But above all, in every case, what was at stake was the obtaining, or attempt to obtain, arms or oil contracts with which Mr. Takieddine was guaranteed significant enrichment through commissions which ended up paid in tax havens.
Clearly, Ziad Takieddine's role was not limited, as it initially appeared to be, to the Karachi affair alone. The financial aspects of the sale of three French Agosta-class submarines to Pakistan, the departure point of the Karachi scandal, are now - following Mediapart's revelations in the case - the object of a judicial investigation. Mr. Takieddine was imposed as an intermediary in that 1994 deal by the government of then-French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur.
Takieddine was made an intermediary with a view to the financing of Balladur's presidential election campaign in 1995, with a flow of commission payments that were fed through a front company which was set up under the supervision of Nicolas Sarkozy, who was then budget minister. Mr. Takieddine has been involved in every similar operation attempted since 2002 by Mr. Sarkozy's entourage. The documents obtained by Mediapart prove that all of these were for the same end; secret financing, with the aim of maintaining an enduring period at the height of political power - which would in turn guarantee the protection and continuation of these illicit practices.
Notes with telling, coded references
The documents already published by Mediapart concerning Saudi Arabia and Libya confirm this. In 2003, when Nicolas Sarkozy was Minister of the Interior, Ziad Takieddine came close to receiving 350 million euros in secret commission payments from a weapons sale to Saudi Arabia. Halted by then-President Jacques Chirac, in the context of the political battle between the Chirac and Sarkozy camps, the negotiations with Saudi Arabia were secretly mounted by the man who Mr. Takieddine referred to as "the boss"; Nicolas Sarkozy. To quote Mr. Takieddine's own notes, the set-up by which it was planned to hide the secret financial flow was subject to "the following decisions by the boss": the creation of a "new structure completely dependent upon his ministry" which, by assuring "the role of Project Consultant" would be "capable of covering the ‘sensitive' subject by way of its invoices".
The "‘sensitive' subject" he referred to was nothing other than the payment of commissions for which a schedule had been planned by Ziad Takieddine based on the same model as that already used in 1994 for another contract, involving the sale to Saudi Arabia of three French La Fayette frigates. That contract was validated by then-budget minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Mr. Takieddine ended up receiving 91 million euros for his part in it. Returning to the 2003 deal attempted with Saudi Arabia, and scuppered by Jacques Chirac, we find the same people involved, the same ministerial figure - now at the interior ministry as opposed to that of the budget - and the same professional, if not personal, intermediary.
The Takieddine documents detailing the financial structure to be used in that deal were addressed to the close circle of aides surrounding of Mr. Sarkozy, notably his advisor Brice Hortefeux (who became junior minister for regional authorities), and Claude Guéant. The documents used a transparent euphemism, capital letter included, when referring to "the desired System". They also refer to a "cover/umbrella on site" which would be "essential to providing an ‘assurance' of a result". Finally, and most importantly, there is mention of "P.'s Merchant Bank", the role of which appears decisive. On October 29th 2003, Mr. Takieddine wrote to Nicolas Sarkozy's close aides that "it will be useful to confirm the signing with the Company, represented by P.'s Merchant Bank, of the contract in your possession according to the approved plans".
Mr. Takieddine's documents reveal the same issues of secret financing in the negotiations with the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Mr. Takieddine served directly as the instrument for the rapprochement that Mr. Sarkozy made with Gaddafi in 2005 via the offices of Claude Guéant. The incongruous, lavish reception in honour of the Libyan dictator in Paris in 2007, following a personal invitation to him by newly-elected President Sarkozy, was something of a conclusion to all this. It was a gesture towards a business partner, after the freeing of the Bulgarian nurses in a symbolic deal that in fact masked financial deals.
In 2005, the conflict between the Sarkozy and Chirac camps saw most of the attempted deals with Libya, while Nicolas Sarkozy was interior minister (1), to be halted by President Chirac. One, however, succeeded. This was the delivery to Libya of electronic material that its manufacturers claimed offered "an inviolable solution to the Anglo-American espionage system". Mr. Takieddine was paid commissions totaling 4.5 million euros for this deal. Beforehand, he prepared visits to Libya by Messers Brice Horetefeux (2) and Claude Guéant (3), offering precise recommendations.
In Mr. Takieddine's notes, there are words dressed in inverted commas that are as enigmatic as they are symbolic. They concern the ‘commercial' matters at stake during the visits by these two personal representatives of then-interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Takieddine noted: "The ‘contents', thus set out, will take into account the sensitivities of the country, thus creating a ‘partnership' which will allow for the realization of the commercial objective [...] It is essential that the ‘business' side of the visit is not placed at the fore by the official preparations. Only as an important point within the framework of ‘exchanges' between the two countries in the area of the fight against terrorism."
Thus it was that the deals in which millions of euros went waltzing around, a process which began in 1994 with the sale of the three Agosta submarines to Pakistan for which he is suspected of receiving the equivalent of 33 million euros, continued after the return to government of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2002.
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1: Nicolas Sarkozy was French interior minister, under then-President Jacques Chirac, from May 7th 2002 until March 30th 2004. He became finance minister from March 31st 2004 until November 29th 2004, again under President Chirac. He was re-appointed interior minister, still under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, from June 2nd 2005, until March 26th 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of France in 2007 and took up office on May 16th 2007.
2: Brice Hortefeux, a longstanding political ally of Nicolas Sarkozy, was a junior minister under interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, responsible for regional government between 2005 and 2007. Under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, he became immigration minister, then labour minister and subsequently, in 2009, interior minister. He was succeeded by Claude Guéant in February 2011. He is now a presidential advisor.
3: Claude Guéant was principal private secretary to interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy from 2002 to 2004, and occupied the same post when Sarkozy became finance minister between March and November 2004, and again when Sarkozy returned to government as interior minister between June 2005 and March 2007. Guéant became secretary- general of the Elysée Palace, equivalent to chief-of-staff of the French presidency, after Nicolas Sarkozy's election as French President in May, 2007. On February 27th 2011, Guéant was appointed as Minister of the Interior.
More than 5,000 revealing documents
The Agosta submarine sale, the origins of what has become known as the Karachi affair, is at the heart of a past event; the secret financing of former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur's presidential campaign in 1995, for whom Nicolas Sarkozy was the strongest supporter, and which finally ended in defeat before his fellow conservative right rival Jacques Chirac.
But the revelations of the Takieddine documents, which Mediapart began publishing in July, are at the centre of current events; the election as president, in 2007, of Nicolas Sarkozy who, although he has not yet officially declared himself, is expected to run for a second term in the next elections in 2012.
The financial aspects of the Karachi affair are now the subject of a judicial investigation by judges Renaud Van Ruymbeke and Roger Le Loire. But it would be astonishing that the more recent events don't arouse their curiosity, with Mr. Takieddine serving as a sort of common link between the presidential campaigns of 1995 and 2007.
The situation created by our revelations is totally new. In general, journalistic investigations in France follow alongside judicial probes (1), with varying distance and success. Mediapart has already demonstrated that it is not limited to such practices, whether that be through its revelations in the Karachi affair or the Tapie affair - in which former French finance minister Christine Lagarde, now IMF Managing Director, has just recently finally become the object of an official investigation - and many more besides. The cause of guaranteeing independence for the judiciary is a battle that is fought daily, just as it is for the press, and it demands the support of free media capable of revealing events even unsuspected by the magistrates themselves.
In the case of the Takieddine revelations, Mediapart has obtained more than 5,000 documents, the authenticity of which is certain. For the moment, they are in the hands of no magistrate, and therefore are not subject at present to any sort of judicial procedure.
Never before has a news organization in France found itself in possession of so many secrets, unveiling, over a lengthy period, the schemes of an arms dealer and his rise to the heart of political power. In some ways, it is the logbook of a triple personality, one who is at the same time a secret advisor, a nefarious intermediary and a dark financier. None of the documents so far published by Mediapart have been refuted or contested. Of all those protagonists in the affairs who have agreed to answer our questions, none has denied the veracity of the documents.
Of course, of this mass of documents, we are careful to use only those which are of public interest, putting to one side those that concern only private affairs.
The exceptional scope of these documents is most certainly the reason for their slow arrival into the public domain. It takes time to sift, assimilate and analyse the contents, just as it takes us at Mediapart time to sort through them. But no-one doubts that, with the measure of our continuing disclosures, the questions already raised by the Socialist Party and the Party of the Left will be increasingly relayed by an opposition that will understand the extreme gravity of the events revealed here. To help with this understanding, we will progressively publish the documents online through our site FrenchLeaks, where they will be freely accessible (see our article about the launch of FrenchLeaks here).
As for the slight coverage of our revelations in the French media, our own readers know only too well that stubbornness eventually reaps rewards. The Bettencourt/L'Oréal affair is a case in point; there too, our early disclosures were at first ignored. This is further proof - if ever we needed it - of the worrying state of our media environment in terms of editorial audacity and political independence. The place of Etienne Mougeotte, editorial director of French daily Le Figaro, in Ziad Takieddine's network of relations and contacts, only underlines a reality that escapes both of them; the unprecedented case in a democracy worthy of the name whereby a major daily newspaper, Le Figaro, is not only the property of a high-profile politician of the party in power, Serge Dassault, but is also the property of a weapons salesman who lives off public contracts. Senator Serge Dassault, a member of President Sarkozy's ruling UMP party, is nothing without the French state, his principal client to who he sells his fighter aircraft without any competition or transparency.
It is for journalists, including those of Le Figaro, to refuse the corruption of their profession that is led by these conflicts of interest which, alas, exist today in the large part of France's privately-owned media, the property of industrialists or financiers who come from outside the news profession. It is also for every citizen to ensure that the 2012 presidential election campaign includes the key issue of liberating the French press from all these subjections that sap its vitality and ruin its integrity. While awaiting this, Medipart will continue to provide an illustration, with its few means but great determination, of the indispensable role of a free press in alerting opinion and encouraging democracy.
When work is completed in an honest and thorough manner, it is always rewarded. In the case of Mediapart's revelations concerning Ziad Takieddine, they will sooner or later become a major subject of public debate because they unveil the corruption that is today established at the heart of French political power. This is a corruption that erodes our institutions, undermines their values and discredits their principles.
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1: In France, investigations into suspected serious criminal offences, as opposed to minor offences, are led by a judicial figure, either a prosecutor in the case of a preliminary inquiry, or an examining magistrate in the case of a full investigation that may, or not, lead to charges and a trial. The examining magistrate, who also holds the title of judge, is in principle an independent judicial figure, as opposed to the prosecutor who is answerable, ultimately, to the political powers that be (in the form of a minister). There are however numerous examples of magistrates who have complained of unconstitutional political interference in the course of their investigations. Very broadly, the magistrate's role is to direct, supervise, and provide initiative in, the investigation carried out in the field by either the police or gendarmerie, and to ultimately decide upon whether a case should be sent to trial, in consultation with all parties and, in final instance, with police or gendarmerie the public prosecutor's office.
'A Mafia-like society, with its codes and rules'
In 1992, in a book that made a considerable mark at the time, university professor of political sciences Yves Mény defined corruption in terms that were simple and clear, and all the stronger for it: "By definition, corruption is a covert exchange, a secret that allows access to resources that the respect of rules and procedures would not have allowed, or would have rendered uncertain". Mény's book, La Corruption de la République, already underlined how the corruption of our institutions was facilitated and made worse by an absence of transparency and the concentration of powers. But now, this corruption at the heart of power, settled 'at home' with such shamelessness, is unprecedented.
Here, the generalised corruption of administrative rules leads to an insidious corruption of political morals. On top of the dirty money that is obtained from oppressive dictatorships is added a total contempt for rules and law, and of those who are the keepers or instruments of rules and law. The Takieddine documents exposed by Mediapart illustrate how a system of parallel diplomacy was set up in complete mockery of the French foreign ministry; they prove that the powers that be were ready to negotiate, in contempt of the rules of law, the judicial situation of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's brother-in-law, Abdullah Senussi, sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a French court in 1999 for his part in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airline DC10 passenger plane over Niger, in which 170 people were killed. An international arrest warrant remains issued against him. He was also implicated in the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 which left 270 people dead. In June this year, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of "murder and crimes against humanity" during the recent upheavals in Libya. (Click here for our exposure of the negotiations over Senussi).
The documents also incontestably prove that Mr.Takieddine, who's fiscal domicile is France, where he is familiar with those at the pinnacle of power, pays no taxes in the country (see our investigation on this here). Despite having a personal wealth estimated to total 97.2 million euros, of which more than 40 million is based in France, Mr.Takieddine pays nothing towards public funds, not a single cent, continually flouting the tax rules without which the nation would have no budget, and thus no State. He does this while also enriching himself thanks to the State, by receiving commission payments from deals that his position alongside Nicolas Sarkozy, while the latter was minister and later president, allowed him to obtain.
Are we still living under a republic in France? One might sincerely doubt it, such is the total lack of reaction to our revelations from the two ministers directly concerned by Mr.Takieddine's tax situation, finance minister François Baroin and budget minister Valérie Pécresse. The doubt is all the more present when considering that Takieddine has long been close to former budget ministers, both Nicolas Sarkozy himself and Jean-François Copé, the latter being not only a personal friend of the arms dealer but also in his debt, as financial documents revealed by Mediapart have shown. The doubt is cemented by the discovery that, among the senior civil servants he invited to a lavish dinner party four days after the electoral victory of the right in legislative elections in 2002, was a former director of the budget.
In a scale of measurement of corruption devised by Yves Mény, in which he established different levels of the danger it poses, he placed at the highest level this "much graver situation whereby a few public leaders, through the importance of the financial and economic decisions they take, also determine the manner and type of relations that the [public] administration has with the private sector." He added that, when that situation arrives, "at the heart of a State of rule of law is thus created a club, a ‘Mafia-like' society with its codes and rules of behavior, its retributions and its sanctions". That is where we find ourselves today.
France urgently needs a proper political opposition
For what is striking amid the mass of documents relating to Mr.Takieddine that Mediapart has obtained, photos included, is the constant presence of an inner circle of people close to Nicolas Sarkozy. Firstly, there is Mr. Sarkozy's longstanding advisor, friend and faithful servitor, Brice Hortefeux, who is readying himself for his role as organizer of the forthcoming presidential election campaign. Then there are two others in this closed circle, whose activities can be traced back to serving Nicolas Sarkozy in his political fiefdom of Neuilly-sur-Seine, in the Hauts-de-Seine département (equivalent to a county) near Paris. They are; Thierry Gaubert, implicated in a property scandal for which he is currently awaiting the judicial outcome, notably concerning his suspected involvement in fraud; and Dominique Desseigne, chairman and managing director of the Lucien Barrière Group of luxury hotels and casinos which flourish across France.
Finally, two other people complete this almost intimate group. The first is Jean-François Copé, whose accession to the post of secretary-general of Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party is better understood in the light of the documents published by Mediapart. The second is Claude Guéant who, before becoming Minister of the Interior in February this year, was considered as the second most powerful political figure in France in his capacity as the president's chief-of-staff (secretary-general of the Elysée Palace), taking initiatives and decisions over the heads of the prime minister and his government in contempt of established practice.
Ziad Takieddine is very close - variously a holiday host, benefactor and advisor - to these five figures who are essential to Nicolas Sarkozy's political organization. He is, in other words, also a member of the clan, or what Yves Mény described as a "club", comprising the inner circle that surrounds "the boss".
Italy, a country where political researchers have spent time studying corruption, is lucky to have had among its citizens the Sicilian author Leonardo Sciasciawho had no fear of the Mafia, to the point of making it the subject of his works. In a concluding note to his 1971 novel Equal Danger, which was made into the film Illustrious Corpses by director Francesco Rosi, he confides that he imagined "a country where ideas no longer had a place, where principles - still proclaimed and celebrated - were daily turned into derision", a country where "only the ruling authorities counted". These authorities, he added, "more and more and gradually, take the obscure form of a chain of connivance, approximately the form of the Mafia".
As provoking as it may be, this political metaphor of the Mafia is no less appropriate regarding the contents of the Takieddine documents. They offer a clear picture of a chain of connivance with power as the one and single thing at stake, and money the only means of achieving it. The picture illustrates a world of ferocious and self-serving interests, where the law is flouted and the State dishonoured.
In La Sicile comme métaphore, (Sicily as a metaphor), a 1979 book of conversations with Leonardo Sciascia conducted by French journalist Marcelle Padovani, Sciascia reflected on the enduring presence of the Mafia in Sicily's culture. He criticized the political parties of the left for having so deserted "the exercise of opposition, and therefore of denunciation, a salutary and capital function in democracy". He concluded: "A true cultural revolution in Sicily will not be possible as long as there will not be a proper opposition."
What was true for Sciascia's Sicily is also true for France under Nicolas Sarkozy. After becoming an island during this presidency, increasingly cut off from the world and others, offering a display of moral decadence at its summit, where officially-adopted xenophobia serves as a diversion to corruption, France does indeed urgently need a proper political opposition. One that is not afraid to counter this chain of connivance that, already, stretches out under the cover of State institutions.
Former editor of French daily Le Monde, Edwy Plenel is Editor-in-Chief co-founder of Mediapart.
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English version: Graham Tearse