PARIS: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was charged with corruption and illegal campaign financing on Wednesday over allegations that the late Libyan dictator Moamer Gaddafihelped fund his 2007 election campaign.
After five years of investigation and two days of questioning the rightwinger in police custody, judges looking into France´s most explosive political scandal decided they had enough evidence to charge the 63-year-old. The combative one-term president, who served from 2007-2012, was charged with corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of Libyan public money, the source added.
He returned home Wednesday after being placed under court supervision. Sarkozy denies the charges, which are the most serious out of the myriad investigations that have dogged him since he left office in 2012.
Sarkozy blasted what he said was a lack of evidence for corruption charges against him over claims the late Libyan dictator Moamer Gaddafifunded his 2007 election campaign, in his court statement published Thursday.
The day after he was charged in France´s most explosive political scandals in decades, the 63-year-old rightwinger said in the statement published by the Figaro newspaper that he had been in “living hell” since the allegations emerged in 2011.
Demanding he be treated as a witness rather than a suspect, he urged magistrates to consider “the violence of the injustice” if it was proven, as he claims, that the accusations are a “manipulation by the dictator Gaddafior his gang”.
“In the 24 hours of my detention I have tried with all my might to show that the serious corroborating evidence required to charge someone did not exist,” Sarkozy said.“I stand accused without any tangible evidence through comments made by Mr Kadhafi, his son, his nephew, his cousin, his spokesman, his former prime minister,” he added, ahead of a television interview on Thursday night.
He was first taken into custody in the Nanterre suburb west of Paris on Tuesday morning before returning for another grilling on Wednesday morning. Since 2013, investigators have been looking into claims by several figures in Kadhafi´s ousted regime, including his son Seif al-Islam, that Sarkozy was on the take in 2007 from the man he helped topple four years later.
