Sarkozy refuses to answer questions over $53m Gaddafi fund

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nicolas sarkozy corruption chargesFormer French President Nicolas Sarkozy refused to answer questions over the allegation that he received millions in campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

The question over the $53 million campaign funds was asked during the final television debate among seven right-wing presidential hopefuls ahead of the first round of their primary.

Irritated by the question, Sarkozy said: “Aren’t you ashamed to repeat claims by a man who has spent time in jail?”

Sarkozy, who is bidding to recapture the presidency in next year’s election, has for years been dogged by allegations that he accepted millions from Gaddafi during his successful 2007 run for the top office.

In a video on news site Mediapart, Ziad Takieddine says he handed over cases of cash to Nicolas Sarkozy. Photograph: Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty Images
In a video on news site Mediapart, Ziad Takieddine says he handed over cases of cash to Nicolas Sarkozy. Photograph: Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty Images
On Tuesday, Al-Arabiya reported that Lebanese-French businessman Ziad Takieddine said he had delivered three cash-stuffed suitcases from the Libyan regime to the Frenchman’s first presidential bid.

Declining to answer the question from a France 2 presenter, Sarkozy suggested it was beneath the dignity of a public television network.

Takieddine video
In a film published on the investigative news website Mediapart, Takieddine, who introduced Sarkozy to Gaddafi, insists he handed over cases stuffed with cash to the former French leader and his chief of staff, Claude Guéant.

Acting out the scene, Takieddine says in the video: “It was a case like that. It opened like this. And the money was inside.”

He told Mediapart: “I have discovered things that should no longer be hidden. I wish to denounce the mafia state in which we are currently living.”

The allegations first emerged five years ago, but Takieddine’s claims are potentially damaging because they come days before Sarkozy seeks the presidential nomination of the centre-right Les Républicains party. The first round of the party’s primaries, in which Sarkozy is trailing Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux, will be held on Sunday.

The allegations first emerged five years ago, but Takieddine’s claims are potentially damaging because they come days before Sarkozy seeks the presidential nomination of the centre-right Les Républicains party.

Takieddine, a wealthy businessman who was close to Gaddafi’s regime, told Mediapart he had transported Libyan cash to the French interior ministry at Place Beauvau in Paris, headed at the time by Sarkozy, on three occasions between November 2006 and January 2007. In May 2007, Sarkozy was elected president.

MEM/Guardian

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11 responses to “Sarkozy refuses to answer questions over $53m Gaddafi fund”

  1. This is the best comedy…in 2011 Sarkozy invited Patriarch Al Rai to Paris and gave this warning: ‘Prepare your people (ze Christians) for an Exodus to Europe’

    “WILL WAR BREAK OUT IN SYRIA?
    Christians of the Orient stand up against the new Western colonialism”
    http://www.voltairenet.org/article171673.html

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar

      “I am conscious of the fact that, seen from a distance, our happy life is completely incomprehensible for the West.”
      “These Western clerics are the first to have been misguided and to demonstrate their contempt for the Oriental values they claim to defend since, through the power of their overwhelming conviction, they seek to introduce western standards as being the only universal and viable norms for the well being and the dignity of the human being.”
      “It’s not the revolution that frightens the Patriarch or the Christians, but the interference by the West which suggests that we are facing a conspiracy or a highjacked movement rather than an entirely spontaneous event.”

      1. Very true un-stabilising..Sarkozy knew of forced depopulation in the Middle East.

        1. 5thDrawer Avatar

          Would anyone say he was ‘a little good’ for trying to give the warning; which was to do something that could perhaps be done in the early Middle ages … not now.
          ‘Pick Up Thy Village And Walk’ has certainly not turned out to be practically possible.

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar

      Intell-ectual Man-behind-the-men – superior in his own mind. (he just talks to them .. ;-)))

  2. 5thDrawer Avatar

    Lots of good people – or people who became good – have spent time in jails, Sarkozy.
    Would you like to re-phrase that question? Or just give an honest answer?

  3. ‘Sarkozy eliminated in 1st round of French center-right presidential primaries – exit polls’

    There..YaLibnan Israel shareholders hacking me
    nydailynewews.ddns.net/news/sarkozy-eliminated-in-1st-round-of-french-centerright-presidential-primaries-exit-polls

      1. nydaylinews.ddns…says watch on RT.

        Watched your link; sarkozystes en pleurs au Cartier General de Paris crying a river. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/247732064389352be9d5a2507faa7d771fde5d424634839f859d9c25f835ebed.jpg 🙁

        1. 5thDrawer Avatar

          So many tears after election results these days … tsk tsk. :-))

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