The appeal trial on suspicion of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign closes on Wednesday with the pleadings of the lawyers of the former head of state, who proclaims his innocence but risks an infamous prison sentence.
Designating him as the “instigator” of a corruption pact with the Libya of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, at the “highest level of seriousness that the Republic can know”, the general prosecutor’s office demanded seven years in prison against Nicolas Sarkozy, 71, for criminal association, corruption and illegal financing of his campaign victorious with embezzled Libyan public money.
This is the heaviest sentence requested against the ten defendants, including former Secretary General Claude Guéant, 81 years old (six years).
The defense of the former head of state will demand his release. The president of the court of appeal, Olivier Géron, will deliver his judgment on November 30.
Over the 15 years of a case triggered by unsubstantiated accusations from Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, Nicolas Sarkozy has evoked a “fable”, a “slander”, a “manipulation” hatched “without a shadow of proof”, or even castigated the “hatred” of the judges, who first instance sentenced him to five years in prison, sending him 20 days to the Parisian health prison, an unprecedented incarceration for a former President of the Republic.
Since March 16 and the opening of the appeal trial, the former head of state has been much more sober in form, less talkative in public expression.
On the merits, however, he did not vary: “not a cent” of Libyan money landed in his campaign, he never considered and even less prepared such financing which, according to the prosecution’s theory, would have had various counterparts, in particular an examination of the criminal situation of the N.2 of the regime, Abdallah Senoussi, sentenced to life imprisonment in France for having ordered the attack against the UTA DC-10 in 1989 (170 dead including 54 French citizens).
No more than the general prosecutor’s office, his proclamation of innocence convinced the civil parties, anti-corruption associations and families of the victims of the attack. Their lawyers denounced the “thug defense” of the defendants, behind “the boss, Mr. Sarkozy” who, faced with “questions that embarrass him”, replied “I don’t remember” or “the others are wrong”.
– “It’s not me, it’s the others!” –
The former head of state also had to face the spectacular defection of his former closest collaborator, Claude Guéant, even though they had presented a united front at first instance.
Prevented by his health from attending the debates, the former secretary general of the Elysée could not bear to learn that his former boss was questioning his integrity at the bar. Without explicitly incriminating Nicolas Sarkozy, he first contradicted his former boss for the first time in two writings to the court.
Above all, he sent his lawyer to deliver a murderous charge as a plea on Tuesday: Me Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi denounced the “cruelty”, the “cynicism” of the former head of state.
To “remove the suspicion that funds were requested” for his victorious presidential campaign, he would have presented the man who was his indispensable right-hand man as “a thug who would have received Libyan funds for his personal consumption”.
All this while counting on the absence of a man “at the twilight of his life” and “on the fact that those who are absent are necessarily always wrong”. Nicolas Sarkozy’s line of defense boils down to “It’s not me, it’s the others!”, he snapped.
Certainly, through the voice of his lawyer, Claude Guéant still denies any pact of corruption or any association of criminals. But by contradicting him, his former liege man has undoubtedly weakened the former head of state who, as much as his freedom, is at stake for his posterity.
In the event of conviction, he will still have recourse, an appeal to the Court of Cassation. However, this will not look at the merits of the case but at compliance with the rules of law.
A conviction which would sanction on November 30 a corruption pact with a foreign power, what is more a criminal dictatorship, would leave a deeper stigma than those, definitive, in the so-called wiretapping and Bygmalion cases.
Published May 27 at 04:04, AFP
