PASCAL POCHARD CASABIANCA / AFP
Nicolas Sarkozy, photographed in 2012 in Ajaccio with Claude Guéant (Photo by PASCAL POCHARD CASABIANCA / AFP)
When you treat your friends so poorly, you don’t need enemies. Nicolas Sarkozy is back in court this Wednesday, April 29 for the appeal trial on the Libyan financing of his campaign, and will be questioned about the statements made by his right-hand man Claude Guéant. Absent from the trial for health reasons, the 81-year-old man surprised everyone by speaking out, outraged by his former boss’s misleading strategy, which has left him in a difficult position.
After his conviction in the first instance for “criminal association,” Nicolas Sarkozy has only one goal for his appeal trial. Failing to convince the court of the absence of wrongdoing (given the multiple pieces of evidence), the former head of state must show that he was neither the instigator nor the accomplice. He has chosen to blame his former collaborators, starting with Claude Guéant, who was himself sentenced in the first instance to 6 years in prison.
Nicolas Sarkozy initially described the meetings between his former chief of staff and Brice Hortefeux with Abdallah Senoussi as a “mistake.” Senoussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and number two in the regime, was convicted in France for terrorism and was subject to an international arrest warrant. According to the accusation, he was at the center of the “corruption pact” that involved legal aid in his favor in exchange for cash from the Libyan regime to finance Sarkozy’s campaign. The former president then suggested that Claude Guéant may have worked for his personal enrichment. He also claimed to have been surprised by “elements that appeared in the file that could not be related to his work,” implying some sort of personal agenda by his right-hand man. “I was surprised, bewildered, sometimes felt like I was not dealing with the same person,” he said.
The end of Guéant’s comfortable silence
This strategy of placing all the blame on Claude Guéant has been described as “like a punch in the stomach” by his lawyer, Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi. According to him, it has “shifted the trial in favor” of the former president. The Sarkozy-Guéant-Hortefeux trio, though not always in complete unity, had appeared in solidarity until now. But after the insinuations made by the former president, Guéant, scandalized to see “his integrity questioned,” decided to speak out. He then methodically undermined Nicolas Sarkozy’s defense line, which aims to portray his collaborators as acting without his approval. In two affidavits read by his lawyer on April 14 and 21, Guéant stated that he had “necessarily” informed Nicolas Sarkozy of his meeting with Senoussi, even if it was not done “immediately.” He also recounted, with citations, a scene from an official dinner in July 2007 between Nicolas Sarkozy and Muammar Gaddafi, where the French president asked Gaddafi to take care of Senoussi’s case.
“Claude, look into this,” Nicolas Sarkozy allegedly said. Finally, Guéant asserts that his various trips to Libya were done at the request of the elected president. Nicolas Sarkozy promptly denied these statements at the time of their reading. The former right-wing leader will now have to provide solid evidence to support his claims.
“It would be good if one day you spilled the beans…”
By attacking his former right-hand man, the ex-president has put himself in a delicate position. Firstly, the very long professional relationship between the two makes it hard to believe that Claude Guéant acted alone, whether for his own interests or those of his boss. It is worth noting that the “corruption pact” highlighted by the prosecution concerns the period when Nicolas Sarkozy was Minister of the Interior (often called “the best-informed man in France”) and Guéant his loyal chief of staff. They both rose through the ranks of power together: Guéant was appointed Secretary-General at the Elysée after Sarkozy’s election (who eventually appointed him minister). Despite the unflattering portrayal Guéant is now getting, the former president himself described his former right-hand man as an “honest man” until the first instance trial.
Furthermore, by shifting the blame to Claude Guéant, Nicolas Sarkozy has deprived himself of a very comfortable shield. In the first instance, the former number 2 at the Elysée claimed he had not informed Nicolas Sarkozy about the secret meetings with Senoussi, a statement he retracted after being abandoned by his mentor. Will he have more damaging revelations for the former president? After his initial statement, he wrote a second one to maintain his words despite the denials. “I am sorry to say that Nicolas Sarkozy is mistaken again,” he wrote while the former president denied the dinner scene with Gaddafi. He further added, “Nicolas Sarkozy denies knowing me before 2002, despite his exceptional memory faculties (he readily claims to have hyperthymesia),” he wrote.
In a conversation taped in 2013 during the investigation, Guéant told his daughter that he knew “a few tricks” to protect himself. “It would be good if one day you spilled the beans,” his interlocutor replied. In another exchange, she emphasized: “Nicolas Sarkozy should be careful because the day you decide to spill the beans, you’ll see…” That day has come, and it was Nicolas Sarkozy himself who provoked it.
