The French news site Mediapart has released another document it claims shows that French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his close associates had maintained backdoor ties to the Libyan government ;from 2005 to 2011, including a 2005–6 agreement to allegedly funnel 50 million Euros worth of Libyan money into Sarkozy’s campaign chest.
The December 10, 2006 letter in question is said to be an official correspondence between ;Bashir Saleh Bashir 1, then-head of the Libyan African Investment Portfolio, the LAP ;and ;Moussa Muhammad Koussa, former head of the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya (the intelligence service) who in March 2011 quit his post as Foreign Minister and fled to the UK. In the letter, Moussa informs Bashir that per the results of the two men’s October 6, 2006 meeting Sarkozy’s chief of staff Brice Hortefeux and the arms dealer Ziad Takieddine, the LAP would be responsible for making payment of 50 million Euros to Sarkozy’s election campaign. The Libyan document released last week is the first new piece of evidence to be presented by the outlet since French terrorism lawyer Jean-Charles Brisard’s walking back of testimony he gave that had described alleged secret 2005 conferences between Sarkozy’s people and the Libyan regime in 2005.
The document ;is the latest piece of evidence reported by Mediapart in a now 10 month-long investigation into Sarkozy’s alleged ties to the deceased Libyan dictator. Jean-Charles Brisard, a French counterterrorism expert, had previously provided Mediapart with testimony from a French doctor associate of Takieddine and documentation of contacts among French Interior Ministry staffers, Takieddine and members of Qadhafi’s family, notably Saif al-Islam, former director of the Qadhafi International Charity and Development Foundation, and former military intelligence head Abdullah Senussi, who is wanted in France for his alleged role in the bombing of UTA Flight 772 in 1989. Anonymous sources told ;Reuters ;last month that the French government is very interested in winning Senussi’s extradition to them because of his contacts with French officials and defense contractors.
This October 6, 2006 meeting would have taken place a year to the day following an alleged October 6, 2005 meeting between some of the principal players in this drama. That 2005 contact reportedly took place during Sarkozy’s only known official visit to Libya. The 2005 meeting recorded by Brisard is said to be where the 50 million Euros payment was first discussed with Hortefeux, with the option of using a front company in Panama and a Swiss bank account to conceal the transactions. Mediapart did not note how it came into possession of the 2006 memo; the outlet’s 2005 sourcing come Brisard, who has since ;sought ;to distance himself from the materials of his cited by Mediapart by stating that the testimonies he has gathered “have no probative value” and that Mediapart was misrepresenting his research.
For the record, Sarkozy’s official campaign spending for the 2007 election was approximately 20 million Euros, just short of the maximum spending ceiling for candidates.
Takieddine, according to Mediapart, was the primary fixer between Sarkozy’s team, in particular Hortefeux who made the 2005 visit, as well as Claude Guéant (who replaced Hortefeux as Minister of the Interior last year) and Thierry Gaubert , Hortefeux’s predecessor and a confidant of Sarkozy’s. Takieddine reportedly sought to advance his own agenda of securing sweet deals for French firms with him as the broker through these get-togethers. Amesys, a French IT firm, has also been implicated in these dealings, having sold ;“Internet-interception equipment” ;to the Libyan government in 2007, which until early 2011 the regime used to monitor dissidents. Takieddine is thought to have helped broker this agreement, and earned a cut of US$500,000 from the deal, which after Qadhafi’s fall became hugely embarrassing for the telecommunications firm. Takeiddine also reportedly tried to make arrangements for Sakrozy’s 2005 visit by getting to discuss refitting contracts for the Libyan Air Force, now no by the UN from making orders to ;European defense majors, outside of the purview of the French Defense Ministry.
The arms dealer denies being present at these meetings, but says he believe that this agreement is authentic, claiming to have spoken with an irate Saif al-Islam in March 2011 about the funding and having seen documents he thought Gaubert would fear becoming public. Takeiddine says he is not sure whether the transaction actually went through or not in the end, but Saif al-Islam told him it did and actually went on TV last spring to accuse Sarkozy of “stealing” from the Libyan people.
Takieddine’s testimony is suspect, of course, because he is currently being investigated by a French court for his possible role in a scandal over ;kickbacks ;and ;money-laundering ;from the sale of warships to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia going to French politican Edouard Balladur’s 1995 presidential campaign. Sarkozy acted as Balladur’s spokesman during that campaign, and Gaubert was investigated last September over his alleged role in securing kickbacks for the 1995 campaign. Takieddine is thought to have ;maintained contact ;with the Saudis to secure further kickbacks under Sarkozy’s watch. The Pakistani ties are currently being investigated as a possible motive in a 2002 terrorist attack in Karachi that left 11 French nationals dead. This isn’t the first time key Sarkozy asosicates have come under scrutiny for alleged financial wheelings and dealings: ;at least ;two ;of his associates have been investigated for influence peddling.
Sarkozy ;denies ;the allegations, as do all of his associates from the Interior Ministry. It is not clear what effect this election year scandal has had on Sarkozy’s 2012 presidential campaign, but he is widely expected to lose his reelection bid to the Socialist candidate François Hollande, coming in second to him in the first round of elections. The second round of voting, and expected Sarkozy defeat, will take place on May 5–6.
Update: Moussa and Bashir (both in exile) deny they had anything to do with the document; conversely, former Libyan PM Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi (also in exile) asserts it is authentic. ;In Libya, the interim government that NATO helped install last year ;says ;it has not been able to verify the letter. ;The Sarkozy campaign has denied all allegations and is threatening to sue Mediapart. Sarkozy's opponents have not made much of this investigation in their campaigning, instead focusing their criticism on Sarkozy's austerity and immigration policies. The final round of the French presidential election will take place May 5-6.
1Bashir’s name, and that of other Libyan officials, have more recently come up in reports from the British press on foreign intelligence services abetting Qadhafi’s spies in keeping tabs on dissidents in the EU. ; ;
Furious Sarkozy vows to file complaint after presidential election
Paris, France
Furious with a website's claims that ousted Libyan Col Muammar Gaddafi had offered illegal funding to Nicolas Sarkozy's election campaign in 2007, the French president on Monday said that he would file a complaint against the Mediapart site.
The site recently published a document, which was addressed to the head of Col Gaddafi's chief of staff at the time and duly signed by ex-Libyan intelligence head Moussa Koussa in which Libya offered EUR 50 million for the election campaign.
The allegation first appeared in March last year at a time when France was leading NATO's efforts to impose a no-fly zone over Libya to quell Gaddafi's forces.
In a statement to France 2 TV, Sarkozy said, "Do you think that with all that I'd done to Mr Gaddafi, he'd have made me a bank transfer? Why not a signed cheque?" The French president described the documents as "crude forgery".
Sarkozy's comments on France 2 TV came less than a week before the second round of presidential election in which he will contest against Socialist Francois Hollande for the coveted post. The president, hence, said that the publication was a politically motivated act and vowed to file a complaint at the end of the campaign.
"The election campaign doesn't justify everything," he complained. "There's a section of the press, of the media, and notably the site in question whose name I refuse to mention, that is prepared to fake documents. Shame on those who have exploited them!"
Responding to Sarkozy's legal threat, Mediapart said that Sarkozy's intention to oppose freedom of media was clear by his reactions on recently disclosed Libyan secrets. The website alleged that instead of responding to the questions, the people in power insult journalists on the information exposed by them.
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"Sarkozy's Gaddafi Connection Helps Make His Defeat a Fait Accompli" is republished with permission of Foreign Policy in Focus