The former head of France’s DGSI domestic intelligence agency was placed under formal investigation on Wednesday on suspicions of influence peddling, reports FRANCE 24.
Bernard "The Shark" Squarcini, once a close ally of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, is suspected of using his police contacts to obtain confidential information about investigations for private clients after he was dismissed as spy chief following Sarkozy's failed 2012 re-election bid.
Squarcini, who set up a private consultancy after losing his job, is also accused of illegally using secret information.
While Sarkozy is not himself accused in the affair, the case has added to the scandals engulfing him as he campaigns for his centre-right Les Républicains (formerly the UMP) party nomination ahead of the 2017 presidential vote.
On Tuesday he was hit by fresh allegations of accepting millions of euros from deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to fund his 2007 presidential campaign. Judicial sources confirmed that investigators had retrieved a diary belonging to former Libyan prime minister Shukri Ghanem that details a series of transfers to Sarkozy's campaign totaling €6.5 million.
Ghanem, who defected from Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, was found dead in 2012 in the Danube river in Vienna.
Sarkozy has denied the claims from several former Gaddafi loyalists that he was in the pocket of the Libyan leader, whom he helped oust during a 2011 NATO-led bombing campaign in which France fired the first shot.
For Pascal Perrineau, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris, the growing list of allegations against Sarkozy may not serve to derail his presidential campaign.
Either "people will say that's enough, there's no smoke without fire", or he may actually succeed in convincing right-wing voters that "everyone is after me".
But the most damaging allegations could be those coming from Patrick Buisson, a historian and former top adviser to Sarkozy who masterminded his controversial shift to the right in the second half of his presidency.