It's a case of every man for himself. Nine years after Nicolas Sarkozy's crazy and ultimately doomed 2012 presidential campaign, none of the fourteen defendants in the so-called Bymalion affair – who include the former head of state himself - intend to carry the can for the massive funding irregularities that later emerged from it. The enormous campaign overspend – 42.8 million euros were spent rather than the legal limit of 22.5 million – the forging ahead with costly American-style political rallies, the fake bills; no one is taking responsibility for them. That includes the former president himself, who has still not deigned to turn up at court, even though he was the main beneficiary of and the person legally responsible for the biggest election overspend of its kind in recent French political history.
The first to face the music in court on Tuesday May 25th and Wednesday 26th was Franck Attal, the boss of Event & Cie, events subsidiary of Bygmalion, the public relations company accused of issuing fake bills to Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party as well as his campaign to hide the overspend. Attal did all he could to deflect the blame. He explained to the court that the sitting president and the conservative UMP party – now called Les Républicains (LR) – were no ordinary clients, and one could not just say no to them. “I did my job within the rules while being aware that the billing was not done as it should have been,” he conceded. But he then added vehemently: “I had no responsibility for the accounting,”
Franck Attal told the court that it was Sarkozy's campaign team and the UMP who had given the instruction to hide the crazy spending on the 2012 campaign rallies under the heading of party conferences, as the legal spending limit for the campaign had been massively exceeded.
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Lawyers representing the UMP – which has become a civil party to the criminal proceedings and is seeking damages – and Guillaume Lambert, who was Sarkozy's campaign director at the time, sought to blame the Event & Cie boss for all the problems. In veiled terms, they accused Attal of having overcharged for his services. Franck Attal hit back in turn at the UMP and the campaign team.
“At the beginning, naively, I thought that each person would accept their responsibility,” he told the criminal court in Paris. “Today, two episodes really get my back up. There's the position of Jean-François Copé [editor's note, who was secretary general of the UMP at the time], who was at the origin of this saga – everyone at the UMP knew [editor's note, about the false billing], from Nicolas Sarkozy to the reception girl, it was a collective position – and they are filing a lawsuit! When I hear that I am outraged,” he said. “And then when Bastien Millot [editor's note, who was chair of Bygmalion at the time and close to Jean-François Copé] says he knew nothing, I am outraged. You don't send soldiers into the supposed firing line for respectable reasons without taking responsibility, I find that scandalous,” Franck Attal said.
Under fire from Guillaume Lambert's lawyers, Attal returned to the attack himself. “I find it a shame that Guillaume Lambert is clinging on to a weak branch,” he said. “Is it possible that he had no knowledge of the cost of the political rallies? I find it a little hard to believe,” said Attal, who pointed to the frequent meetings that were held on the subject. “When Guillaume Lambert implies that there was overbilling and fake services then that's me who's being attacked, and I'm responding to it,” he said. On the courtroom benches Guillaume Lambert shook his head each time his former associate described their conversations at the time.
Franck Attal was less forthcoming about the double billing of the Sarkozy campaign implemented by Bygmalion, in which the company undercharged for campaign events themselves and then sent an extra “fake” bill to the UMP. Instead he painted himself as a mere employee of that company, in charge solely of “producing” the political rallies. Meanwhile Sarkozy's campaign team decided to multiply the number of events and increase the number of technical resources in an extravagant headlong rush, he said, citing numerous examples.
“I was just the vehicle, the link,” said the former executive and Bygmalion shareholder, when he was reminded about the financial interest he might have had in seeing Sarkozy's campaign expenses rocket sky high. Attal said that he had in fact been given contradictory instructions. First of all he was told to spend less because expenditure was getting out of control, then told to do more and better without worrying about the budgets. This was after the extravagant rally held at Villepinte in the north-east suburbs of the capital on March 11th 2012.
Franck Attal also insisted to the court that Jean-François Copé – then secretary-general of the UMP – was perfectly aware of the system of false bills put in place to hide the breach of the authorised limit in the Sarkozy campaign's expenditure. The Event & Cie executive said that after the elections Copé held a derisory meeting just to clear himself of any blame, feigning ignorance of the enormous campaign overspend that had been paid for by his party to help their candidate.
UMP officials have denied this version of events. The investigating judges did not pursue any charges against Jean-François Copé, who will thus be questioned about this by the court purely as a witness.
In addition to Nicolas Sarkozy the accused include senior election campaign staff, UMP party officials, accountants, and executives at Bygmalion and Event & Cie such as Franck Attal. They face a variety of charges, including forgery, the use of false instruments, fraud, breach of trust, and receiving the proceeds of and complicity in the illegal funding of an election campaign. If convicted, some face jail terms of up to five years and fines of up to 375,000 euros. Sarkozy himself faces the lesser charge of the “illegal funding of an election campaign”. Prosecutors say that the former president – who in March was convicted of corruption and influence peddling in an unrelated case - knew that his campaign was massively overspent but that he ignored advice to keep expenditure within the legal limit. All deny the charges and the trial continues.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter