Nicolas Sarkozy is present in the Paris court as the trial gets underway from 1230 GMT this Monday. He plans to attend the initial phase of hearings, as a source close to him told AFP, asking not to be named.
Did the former French president receive money from the then Libyan leader Muammar Khadafi to finance the campaign that brought him to the Élysée in 2007? This question is at the heart of this trial, where he and eleven other defendants stand trial, including three former ministers - Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux et Éric Woerth.
Vincent Brengarth, lawyer for the Sherpa association, a civil party, told RFI that he hopes that despite the longevity and complexity of the case, the public's interest will match the stakes of this trial.
"This case might seem, in some respects, completely fictional if it were not supported by years of thorough investigations," he said.
The accusations
The first accusations against them came from Libya in 2011, just before the fall of Khadafi. The Libyan leader had then been cornered by a popular uprising, supported by a Western intervention, particularly France and President Sarkozy himself. A Libyan news agency announced in March 2011 that the Libyan regime would soon reveal a "secret capable of jeopardizing the political career of the French head of state."
Khadafi's son, Saif al-Islam, soon demanded in an interview that Sarkozy "return the money to the Libyan people." Muammar Khadafi himself soon after stated in an interview with the French daily Le Figaro that it was thanks to them that Sarkozy "became president; it is we who provided him with the funds."
The French news site Mediapart later published a document, presented as a note written in Arabic and dated 10 December 2006, in which the former head of Libya's external intelligence services, Moussa Koussa, reportedly mentions a "preliminary agreement" to "support the electoral campaign of candidate" Sarkozy "for an amount worth 50 million euros."
Sarkozy, then a candidate for re-election in the 2012 presidential race, denounces the following day an infamy and later files a lawsuit against Mediapart, accusing it of producing a forgery.
A long investigation followed, and several judicial decisions. Finally, the Court of Cassation definitively upheld the dismissal ordered in favour of Mediapart and, without confirming that it is a genuine document, dismissed the accusation of forgery repeatedly made by Nicolas Sarkozy.
However, the investigating judges explained that the disputes regarding the authenticity of this note led them not to consider it a central element of the case, even though Koussa confirmed the content of the document.
After ten years of investigation, the magistrates decided in August 2023 that there were sufficient charges to refer 12 men to trial, including Sarkozy and former ministers Guéant, Hortefeux, and Woerth.
If convicted, Sarkozy faces up to 10 years in prison under the charges of concealing embezzlement of public funds and illegal campaign financing.
The trial is due to last until April 10.
A case of major corruption
According to the magistrates, the case actually began almost 20 years ago: At the end of 2005, Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior in Dominique de Villepin's government but aiming for the 2007 presidential election, met Khadafi in Tripoli. Officially, the two men met to discuss immigration, but they are accused of signing a "corruption pact" then.
Sarkozy is said to have obtained a financial contribution for his presidential campaign, according to the accusation, which relies on the statements of seven former Libyan dignitaries, on the discrete movements of Guéant and Hortefeux before and after, as well as on the notebooks of the former Libyan Minister of Petroleum, Choukri Ghanem, who was found drowned in the Danube in 2012.
Khadafi supposedly hoped to obtain international rehabilitation this way.
Sarkozy has always denounced it as a fable, even a conspiracy aimed at harming him, rejecting the accusations entirely.
This new trial is starting barely half a month after France's top appeals court on 18 December rejected Sarozy's appeal against a one-year prison sentence for influence peddling, which he is to serve by wearing an electronic tag rather than in jail.
Sarkozy's career has been shadowed by legal troubles since he lost the 2012 presidential election but he is an influential figure and also known to regularly meet President Emmanuel Macron.
Libyans between resentment and anger
For Libyans, the question of corruption does not arise. Familiar with the practices of Khadafi's regime, which provided funds to foreign heads of state, the Libyans are convinced that their country did indeed finance Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
"For the Libyans, it's as if it belongs to a bygone era," researcher Jalal Harchaoui, a Libya specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, told RFI's Africa service.
"They are well aware that Sarkozy played an important role in Libya's fate in 2011. But people are not really hanging on to this particular case. They tend to think that there is not much suspense regarding the final outcome. They are rather disillusioned by this story."
Many in Libya, on the other hand, are surprised that Sarkozy is only being judged for a corruption case, while in their country, he is mostly seen as the one who destroyed the Libyan state and plunged it into despair since France's military intervention in 2011.
Since then, their living conditions have continued to deteriorate in Libya, where people face corruption, instability, and the devastation caused by militias and constant foreign interventions.
Some voices have been raised, calling for the former occupant of the Élysée to be brought before the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes committed against the Libyan people.
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