The police carried out searches in the Parisian house and office of the former president of France Nicolas Sarkozy within investigation of charges that he illegally received additional financial means din the course of election campaign of 2007. In particular, Sarkozy is suspected in unduly reception of financing from the richest citizen of France, heiress of L'Oreal Empire Liliane Bettencourt, BBC reports.
Besides Sarkozy’s house the search was carried out in one of the lawyer offices which partially belong to the ex-president.
Scandal ran high in the summer of 2010 when former accountant of madam Bettencourt - Clare Thibout – informed the police about transfer of 150 thousand Euro in cash to representatives of "Union pour un movement populaire” which was headed by Sarkozy. By words of Thibout, money was intended for the treasurer of the party Eric Woerth who after Sarkozy’s victory became the minister of the budget and even headed the Ministry of Labour soon after it.
According to the statement of Bettencourt as well as to evidences of some more witnesses, Sarkozy visited Bettencourt’s residence at least twice before the elections.
________________________________________
From editorial board: There are two moments at once connected with this story – purely French and international one.
Hardly Frenchmen forgot that quite recently Nicolas Sarkozy intended to submit the claim against website which reported that the former leader of Libya, Colonel Gaddafi offered him financial support during election campaign of 2007.
Site Mediapart published the document of 2006 signed by the former head of the Libyan investigation Moussa Koussa in which there was an offer of financing at a rate of 50 million Euros.
Surely in two weeks prior to elections Sarkozy called the publication rough fake, promised to bring all to the court, but as we see, appeared under serious suspicion himself - for us, in Russia, for example, the search of premises of the former president being carried out right after termination of immunity is something from the category of unscientific fantasy.
Meanwhile all friends our former-new and, obviously, future president Putin find themselves on a dock right after termination of their powers. It happened so with the best buddy fratello Berlusconi. It happened so with his "war bride" Timoshenko who is being incriminated transactions where Putin personally acted as the second party. Now it’s been happening to Nicolas...
First suspicions that colonel Gaddafi offered Sarkozy illegal financing of the campaign of 2007 appeared in March of last year when the son of the killed Libyan leader (after all Gaddafi is one more great friend of our national leader) Saif al-Islam declared that he was ready to give all details of transactions. The document published was allegedly signed by Koussa and addressed to Bashir Saleh occupying then the post of the head of administration of Gaddafi and the head of the Libyan independent investment fund.
Well, Gaddafi was then "tipped" as rather small and insignificant in international deals minion, besides he was undesirable witness of sins of "cool boys". Now similar unpleasant facts connected with Syria appear, they force to be afraid strongly for the destiny of Bashar Assad - they prefer not to leave witnesses here. Mubarak is dying in the Egyptian prison - silently.
By the way, now is the turn of Assad's "twin brother" - Ilham Aliyev. Position of Nazarbayev and Lukashenko is also not so strong – unless they have reasons to grab hold of Moscow otherwise, they now that it doesn’t extradite (or nearly doesn’t extradite – they nevertheless extradite Mutalitbov to Azerbaijan).
You have to think what better is – eternally extrajudicial dictator who could be re-elected only by the bullet, or pleasant possibility to see yesterday's head of the state on a dock. While there are no doubts that each head of the state has something to be brought to trial for...
Anatoly Baranov, editor-in-chief of FORUM.msk
