It’s the trial that Nicolas Sarkozy has been dreading the most: the one for the alleged Libyan financing of his victorious 2007 presidential election campaign. The former president stands accused of having, starting in 2005, entered into a “corruption pact” with Muammar Gaddafi, to facilitate the Libyan dictator’s return to the international stage in exchange for financial and industrial benefits. A few months after his election, in July 2007, the newly elected French president visited Tripoli. Five months later, he hosted the Libyan leader in Paris, welcoming him with great fanfare. Later, Sarkozy would lead an international coalition to intervene in Libya, which had risen up against the dictator, who was killed in October 2011. The bombings did not help the recovery of the regime’s archives.
The former president now stands trial in Paris, from Monday, January 6 until April 10, for “corruption, concealment of misappropriation of public funds, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy.” Moreover, he will soon have to defend himself while wearing an electronic bracelet, after having been definitively sentenced, on December 18, to a three-year sentence, of which two years suspended, for corruption and influence peddling, in an offshoot case from the Libyan one. He is this time accompanied by 12 other defendants, including three former ministers: Brice Hortefeux, Claude Guéant and Eric Woerth.
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