Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to go on trial over Libyan campaign funds

  French investigative magistrates have decided that former president Nicolas Sarkozy will go on trial in 2025, with 12 others. 

The charges: illegal campaign financing, embezzling, passive corruption. 

Sarkozy received millions from Moammar Gadhafi's government for his 2007 presidential campaign. 

The case is the biggest and most shocking of multiple corruption investigations involving Sarkozy.

In 2007, Sarkozy welcomed Gadhafi with high honours, but then put led the NATO-led airstrikes that helped topple the Libyan leader in 2011.

Read more here:

 

In Le Monde in English:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/08/25/former-president-nicolas-sarkozy-to-go-on-trial-over-libya-financing-for-election-campaign_6108081_7.html 

In the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/world/europe/sarkozy-trial-france-libya-corruption.html 

And to know more about the situation in Libya now, read my analytical piece for RFI English  here:

Spike in violence shows Libya remains crippled by rival armed groups

Following a year of relative calm in Libya, fighting erupted again this week in the capital Tripoli. The UN-backed government remains powerless in more than a third of the country, whose people have not seen an election in almost a decade.