In November 2020, Ziad Takieddine, a key witness in the French judicial investigation into the suspected illegal funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign by the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, publicly retracted statements he had previously given to judges in which he had confirmed his own role in transporting the cash payments.
Takieddine, a businessman who holds dual Lebanese and French nationality, made the retraction in an interview published in French weekly magazine Paris Match, and in a short video recording broadcast by news channel BFM TV, saying he had lied about Tripoli’s financing of Sarkozy’s campaign after being asked to do so by Judge Serge Tournaire when the latter was head of the funding probe.
But it has since been revealed how Takieddine’s about-face was orchestrated by a disparate group seeking to help Sarkozy, including Michèle “Mimi” Marchand, a paparazzi agency boss and an influential PR fixer to politicians, and who is close to Sarkozy. She and others were last year placed under investigation for “witness tampering” (namely Takieddine) and “criminal conspiracy”.
Under French law, a person can only be placed under investigation if a magistrate establishes serious and – or – concurring evidence that they committed a crime. It is only if and when a magistrate decides to send an individual for trial that they are charged.
Mediapart has gained access to further details of the evidence collected in the ongoing investigation as it now closes in on a disparate group of individuals, who apparently had only in common the aim of helping Sarkozy to escape any possible future prosecution in the Libyan funding case.
At the time of Takieddine’s extraordinary retraction, Sarkozy was – and still is today – formally placed under investigation for suspected “criminal conspiracy”, “corruption”, “illicit funding of an election campaign” and “receiving misappropriated [Libyan] public funds”. He has firmly denied any wrongdoing.
The judicial investigation into the suspected Libyan funding of Sarkozy’s successful 2007 election campaign was opened after a series of reports on the subject by Mediapart, and notably the publication of a document issued by the Gaddafi regime approving the illicit funding. Under questioning by detectives in the witness tampering probe, Michèle Marchand was asked what her mission in the operation was. “The mission to 'kill' Mediapart,” she replied.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In testimony he had previously given to the judicial investigation, and also in a November 2016 video interview with Mediapart, Takieddine, who for years had acted as a business and diplomatic intermediary for Sarkozy’s political team, described his role in transporting cash sums to Paris from Tripoli in late 2006 and early 2007. He detailed how he personally handed three suitcases containing a total of 5 million euros to both Sarkozy, who was then interior minister and preparing his election bid, and Sarkozy’s chief of staff Claude Guéant.
Both the sum and the involvement of Takieddine were confirmed in statements given by Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and intelligence chief. Senussi’s statements were given in September 2012, one year after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, during questioning by Libya’s prosecution services, acting on behalf of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC, whose probe concerned the extent of corruption under the dictatorship, passed on Senussi’s account to the French authorities in 2016.
Importantly, Takieddine had already detailed the same elements regarding the funding of Sarkozy’s campaign one month before the existence of Senussi’s statements were made public.
Takieddine, who during the 2000s served as a business and diplomatic intermediary for Sarkozy’s political team, notably in Arab countries, fled to Lebanon in 2019 after a Paris court handed him a five-year jail term for his part in a separate illegal kickbacks scam involving French arms sales to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
It was therefore in Beirut that, in a negotiated operation led by Marchand, Takieddine made his stunning retraction in November 2020. “Mr Sarkozy did not have Libyan financing for the presidential campaign, neither could Mr Gaddafi have done it because he never did it,” he said in the short video obtained by BFM TV, which was first posted online on November 11th.
Immediately after the video was released, and before Takieddine’s more detailed interview with Paris Match had hit newsstands, Sarkozy announced on Facebook that he was filing a request before the judges in charge of the Libyan funding probe to annul their placing of him “under investigation”.
Sarkozy added: “The judicial investigation, opened on the basis only of the lying statements of Ziad Takieddine, today finds itself in a complete impasse.”
Subsequently, in December 2020, Takieddine went so far as to sign a ten-page document before a public notary in Beirut in which he once again claimed to have lied about the Libyan funds given to Sarkozy, adding that he had done so at the express demand of the investigating judge, Serge Tournaire.
The document, presented in a question-and-answer format, was immediately sent to the judges investigating the Libyan funding, and was then the subject of a lengthy follow-up article in Paris Match under the headline: 'Exclusive: Takieddine accuses his judges'.
But on January 14th 2021, Takieddine was finally questioned in Beirut over his retraction by the two magistrates in charge of the Libyan funding probe, when he told them that his words had been “deformed” by Paris Match. “I do not confirm these remarks which had been badly turned [around] by the journalist,” he said in his statement, adding: “Don’t forget that Paris Match belongs to a friend of Sarkozy’s.”
The principal suspects under investigation for witness tampering, are; paparazzi agency boss and PR fixer Michèle Marchand; Noël Dubus, a convicted fraudster and former police informer who is suspected of leading the logistics of the operation; Arnaud de la Villesbrunne, a former PR agency director with links to Sarkozy’s conservative Les Républicains party and who is suspected of issuing false invoices for the operation, and Pierre Reynaud, a wealthy property developer.
They have all been ordered not to enter into contact with each other, and to have no contact with Hervé Gattegno, who was editor of Paris Match at the time of interview with Takieddine.
Nicolas Sarkozy has not until now been questioned by the witness tampering investigation. His spokeswoman did not reply to Mediapart’s request for comment.
The investigation has established that Pierre Reynaud, 65, helped to finance the operation. The wealthy property developer admits to having been an acquaintance of Alexandre Djouhri, who is one of the principal suspects in the Libyan funding case. Reynaud was first placed under investigation in June 2021 over the payment of 320,000 euros to the team set up around Noël Dubus.
He was again placed under investigation last October, this time over a dispute with Dubus concerning 100,000 euros he had lent to the latter in a plan to free Hannibal Gaddafi , one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons, from detention in Lebanon. That plot is suspected of being aimed at convincing Hannibal Gaddafi, in return for his freedom, to then declare that the Gaddafi regime never funded Sarkozy’s campaign.
When Reynaud was taken into custody for questioning last year he denied having any contact with Sarkozy, but in a phone conversation shortly afterwards with someone close to him, and which was tapped by police, he presented the former president as a “friend”. Mediapart has gained access to the transcript of that conversation, in which Reynaud is recorded as saying: “Twelve hours of [police] searches and twenty hours of questioning […] I insisted that I did not know Nicolas Sarkozy, [but] with all that they’ve collected, well… He’s put me in the shit again that one […] You can’t give up on a friend, eh? […] One can’t give up on one’s friends.”
He continued: “As long as the four other idiots didn’t grass it held up. When they grassed, I remained alone against everyone else there. […] When they [the investigators] saw they could get nothing out of me, they sent us [before the magistrates]. I am placed under investigation for criminal conspiracy – that never happened to me in my whole life – with a view to committing fraud in a [legal] judgment. Because Sarkozy, when Takieddine did that retraction, submitted a request for the case to be dismissed. […] If it turns out in the end that Takieddine had been paid to change the version [of events], it becomes fraud.”
“When you’re friends with a guy for thirty years, that he’s in the shit and he asks you to lend a hand, what do you do?” Reynaud added. “But when everyone has confessed, I understood that he was dead, eh.”
“They want Sarkozy’s hide,” commented the person he was speaking with, whose identity was not included in the transcript.
“Yes, agreed, but the problem is that each time he tries to get out of it, he can’t get out of it. It’s not possible. […] He’s caught in the same vice as me. The cops are going to get him, it won’t be in not a short time [sic].”
During the same conversation, Reynaud said the police officers assigned to the judicial investigation were looking for proof that he transferred 5 million euros to Takieddine in Lebanon. “As it’s not me who paid them out, they couldn’t find it.”
“The cops,” continued Reynaud, “they’re working on the basis that there were three people who could pay the 5 million.”
“There was you,” said his interlocutor.
“Or the Qatari emir.” The name of Alexandre Djouhri was also mentioned.
“Now then, they know it’s not me,” said Reynaud. […] “Because the peanuts of 300,000 [euros], that’s not what the story’s about. As for me, they’re hounding me for transfers of 300,000 to 320,000. And 20,000 euros in cash. […] with me, it’s not dramatic. But if it’s the Qatari emir who handed out the five million, that’s going to create a mess.”
The mystery of alleged meetings with Nicolas Sarkozy
Speaking to Mediapart, a woman friend of Takieddine’s said he had been led to believe he would receive money in exchange for retracting his accusations against Sarkozy. “They convinced Ziad that they would give him money, a large sum,” she said. “Lisa [editor’s note, an assistant for Noël Dubus] told me very clearly that Noël was due to make a trip to Qatar, where he hoped to be paid a commission that would allow him to pay Ziad. We met together the night after the interview and they spoke about all the details.”
Mediapart has gained access to the contents of a messaging exchange on WhatsApp, discovered by the investigators, in which Dubus told a woman friend, Diane D. (her full identity is withheld here), of his plan to visit Qatar on November 2nd. He offered to pick her up in Dubai on his return journey in a “private jet” that he was given free use of.
She asked him who was paying for the plane, to which Dubus replied: “The gentleman who, thanks to me, will extricate himself. See Paris Match on Thursday.” Pressed further, Dubus added. “It [sic] was your president in 2007. And it’s not his personal jet, but one that is lent to him for me.”
There is so far no evidence to confirm the claimed trips to Qatar, nor is there any evidence that the suggestion that the Gulf state would provide a payment was anything other than an attempt to bait Takieddine into making his public retraction.
A former postal worker, fraudster and police informer
Questioned by Mediapart, Reynaud said Dubus had claimed to him that Qatar would provide payment to Takieddine. “When Dubus tells me ‘I’ve just left Sarko’s place’ [a widely used nickname for Nicolas Sarkozy], for me that’s possible. And when he tells me ‘Sarko called the emir of Qatar in front of me’, I know that Sarko can call the emir of Qatar. That’s public knowledge. And I know that the emir of Qatar, if Sarko tells him to hand four mill’ to that person, I know that he’ll hand them over. That’s also public knowledge. I know it. And when Dubus says to me ‘I’m leaving for Doha to pick up a suitcase, and afterwards it’s the emir’s jet that takes me back to Beirut’, I believe him. That’s not true, but it’s coherent. It’s possible.”
Meanwhile, the investigators found two handwritten dedications, with handwriting and signatures that resemble those of Sarkozy, in copies of the former president’s book, Le Temps des Tempêtes, published in July 2020. In a copy given to Dubus, the dedication read: “For Noël, thanks for everything. Your friend.” The other dedication in another copy was apparently addressed to the mother of Dubus’ assistant, Lisa H (her full identity is withheld here): “For Nadia who can be proud of her daughter Lisa. December 17th 2020.”
The investigation also found a phone text message Dubus sent to the daughter of public relations agent Anne Testuz (an associate of his), on February 11th 2021, timed at 6.20pm. It contained a photo of a building lit by a streetlamp close to Sarkozy’s home in Paris, with the words: “I’m going to Zebulon’s place,” [editor’s note, Zebulon was a nickname Dubus and others gave to Sarkozy], adding that “Mimi [Marchand] is joining me.”
Dubus, once a post office worker, has multiple convictions for white-collar fraud over a period of 20 years. In the early 2000s, he became an informer for several different police services. He was registered as such in official documents of the Versailles judicial police, for who he was an active informant between 2011 and 2016. He was also recorded as an informer for an anti-terrorist branch of the police, the SDAT, between 2012 and 2014, for the anti-corruption and financial crime unit, the OCLCIFF, for seven months in 2013, and for the police agency investigating the trafficking of cultural assets, the OCBC, from 2014 to 2016. That all came to an end in July 2016, when he was struck off the list of police informers by the ‘Bureau central des sources’, and placed on a blacklist.
One of his friends, Thomas Nlend, was questioned in the current witness tampering investigation over his suspected involvement in the case. In a statement given to investigators last October, he told them: “I know that Noël had wanted to meet Sarko as of the start. It was the Grail. He said that he was once a postal worker, [that] he was always looked down upon, and that he was going to save Sarko. He said that often, that he wanted to meet him. With hindsight, he nevertheless knew how to pick up money along the way. The simple fact of meeting with Sarkozy could allow him to make money afterwards, to bolster his standing before people, in his relations with the Libyans. It’s very complex.” Nlend said Marchand was uncertain of Dubus’ reliability, adding that she thought he talked a lot, and had asked him who Dubus worked for, even fearing that he was in connivance with investigating magistrates.
The president’s men
On the afternoon of December 25th 2020, Pierre Reynaud sent a phone text message to Dubus, which read: “Hello the firefighter of the 5th Republic, you must save soldier BH.” Dubus replied asking who he was referring to. “Brice”, wrote Reynaud, apparently referring to Brice Hortefeux, a longstanding close friend of Sarkozy whom he served in several ministerial posts, including that of interior minister. Hortefeux had just days earlier been again placed under investigation in the Libyan funding probe.
Questioned by Mediapart, Reynaud denied knowing Hortefeux and said he had never sent Dubus the text message in question, suggesting that his phone may have been used without his knowledge. “I have other things to do on Christmas day,” he said, insisting that “I never wrote that”.
He referred to his close relationship with the late French tycoon Bernard Tapie. “Everyone knows that I was close to Tapie,” he said. “We used to see each other three times per month. He was close to Hortefeux, so the shortcuts are easily made: ‘Tapie asked Reynaud, who can refuse him nothing because he’s ill, to get Hortefeux out of the shit of Libya’.”
However, he spoke admiringly of Hortefeux: “He’s a brilliant man, he’s never been at fault. He’s a friend of Sarko since 40 years, he’s never betrayed, always there. Even things he doesn’t want to do, he [Sarkozy] manages to get him to do. Hortefeux, he’s a chap.”
He spoke well of others in Sarkozy’s circle, including Claude Guéant, the former president’s chief of staff who was also made interior minister. Guéant, convicted for pocketing interior ministry cash payments intended for police operations, is also under investigation for “criminal conspiracy” in the probe into the suspected Libyan funding of Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.
As for Patrick Balkany, a longstanding ally of Sarkozy’s, a veteran conservative and a former mayor of the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, now returned to jail for breaching his bail conditions, Reynaud commented: “He’s in prison, its completely disgusting because they all profited from Balkany, all of them, without exception.” Concerning Alexandre Djouhry, he said they had not seen each other “in years”, but had close friends in common. “How can you know Djouhri and not know everyone?” he asked.
However, he was scathing of Thierry Gaubert, another longstanding ally of Sarkozy, who served the latter as a ministerial advisor beginning in the mid-1990s. Gaubert was also placed under investigation in the Libyan funding probe. Reynaud dismissed Gaubert as being a “grass”, explaining: “For me, grassing doesn’t enter into my system […] Sarko never placed trust in Gaubert, I can prove it, but he was there and he has done nothing other than idiot things.”
Contacted by Mediapart, both Brice Hortefeux and Thierry Gaubert said they did not know Pierre Reynaud.
Despite Reynaud’s apparent animosity towards him, Gaubert appears to have been at least partially involved in the witness tampering case. When Dubus sent out for validation to other associates in the operation the plan for Takieddine to officialise his retraction before a solicitor in Beirut, PR agent Anne Testuz wrote back: “That must be sent on to Gaubert: was he the intermediary [editor’s note, between Nicolas Sarkozy’s ministerial team and Ziad Takieddine in 2003] as Mediapart has said?” She added: “All of Mediapart’s arguments must be refuted.”
‘Thank you 4 million times!’
During the interview with Mediapart, Reynaud described Takieddine and Dubus as “the same team of thoroughgoing liars”. He said he was contacted by Dubus in the summer of 2020 firstly to propose the purchase of paintings, and subsequently a project for receiving vast loans from a Philippines investment fund. Reynaud claimed that while it was his money that paid for trips by Dubus to Lebanon, he in fact believed its was for trips to Hong Kong.
That version of events was contested by Dubus’ assistant, Lisa H, in a statement she gave to the investigation. “There was never any question of going to Hong Kong,” she said, “and Reynaud knew perfectly well that we were going to Lebanon.”
According to Dubus, Reynaud offered to pay for the travel to Lebanon after he learnt about the plan for Takieddine to make his retraction in Paris Match.
Noël didn’t want to advance the funds to pay for the travel expenses,” added Lisa H. in her statement, “so he asked Michèle Marchand to look for funds on her side. We found ourselves with two potential financiers for a trip. In the end, it was Reynaud who provided the financing.”
The property developer allegedly stipulated that he would not hand over the funds until the interview with Takieddine was published. Dubus sent him a photo of the front page of Paris Match on November 10th 2020, and then the whole of the article with Takieddine’s interview the following day. The expenses of the operation were paid using pre-dated, false invoices established by Arnaud de la Villesbrunne.
Reynaud covered Dubus’ travelling expenses with two cheques totalling 30,000 euros. These were followed in December 2020 by bank transfer payments into the accounts of Villesbrunne and Dubus of 40,000 euros and 80,000 euros, and another 170,000 euros in January 2021. The investigation believes most of the sums went to Dubus.
Meanwhile, Takieddine and his lawyers had by December received some payment, but were waiting for more. On January 20th and 21st, phone text exchanges between Takieddine and Dubus suggested that the situation was unblocked. Takieddine wrote that he was “super-grateful for the 4M$ and the card for activation”. He added: “Thank you 4 million times!”
Then, on January 29th 2021, he sent another message: “In order for these transfers to be made in the shortest of time, I am sending you the details of a bank account in London that can receive the three payments for a total amount of 4,000,000, confirmed by a letter from you.”
Payment of that total amount was never again mentioned in the discovered exchanges between the two men.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
This abridged English version, with some added background reporting, by Graham Tearse