Nicolas Sarkozy trial: Former French President accused of corruption pact with Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi

French prosecutors yesterday claimed to have irrefutable proof that former president Nicolas Sarkozy arranged a “corruption pact” with the late Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.

It was said to be worth £42 million ($85m) to Sarkozy, while Gaddafi wanted to see his oil-rich country rehabilitated after it was blamed for atrocities including the Lockerbie bombing.

Sarkozy, 69, who faces ten years in prison, was notably suntanned when he took his place in a Paris dock yesterday, having just returned from a holiday in the Seychelles with third wife Carla Bruni.

The former supermodel, 57, was not in court, despite facing charges of her own in connection with the case.

Prosecutors alleged that Sarkozy accepted the millions in laundered cash from Gaddafi to fund his successful election campaign in 2007.

Jean-François Bohnert, head of France’s National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), said a 10-year probe had led to Sarkozy appearing in the 32nd chamber of the Paris Criminal Court.

“The corruption pact was designed to improve relations with Libya,” said Mr Bohnert, who insisted the prosecution “was not political” and that Sarkozy “had not been found guilty in advance”.

He added: “We have in the legal file proof that €6million ($10 million) left Libyan public funds and arrived in France through intermediaries.”

Sarkozy, on trial with 12 other defendants, is charged with corruption, receiving stolen public funds, illegal campaign financing and criminal association.

His counsel said all 13 of them vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

The former president was last month convicted of bribing a judge in a separate case, meaning he was likely to be wearing an electronic tag under the trouser leg of his dark blue lounge suit.

The PNF alleges Sarkozy first requested financing during a visit to Libya when he was France’s interior minister in 2005.

This led to “the corruption pact”, which saw suitcases full of cash delivered by middlemen, it is alleged.

Within months of his election in 2007, Sarkozy invited Gaddafi to Paris for a state visit and praised him as a great friend and “Brother Leader”.

This was while Libya was still viewed as a pariah state because of the downing of PanAm Flight 103, with the loss of 270 lives, over Lockerbie in 1988.

The assassination of PC Yvonne Fletcher outside Libya’s London embassy four years earlier was also still causing outrage.

And Gaddafi’s head of military security and brother-in-law, Abdallah Senoussi, had also been found guilty in absentia of an attack on a French plane which killed 170.

The financing case was aided by the Mediapart investigative news site, which in 2012 published a document signed by Libya’s intelligence chief which apparently proved Sarkozy had been paid the equivalent of $84 million.

Sarkozy insisted the contract was a fake, but it was ruled it can be used as evidence.

Former ministers Claude Gueant and Eric Woerth have also been charged in relation to the allegations.

In 2011, the RAF and French Air Force led the bombing campaign that ended with Gaddafi being hacked to death by a mob.

There were claims Sarkozy wanted him dead because of his potential to produce incriminating evidence.

Sarkozy has already become France’s first ex-president to be tried for alleged crimes carried out in office.

Within days of losing his presidential immunity from prosecution in 2012, fraud squad detectives raided the Paris home he shares with Ms Bruni.

In 2021, he was found guilty of illegally funding his campaign for re-election and faced jail.

It followed Sarkozy being given three years for bribing a judge – a conviction confirmed on appeal last month, with Sarkozy told he can serve his sentence wearing a tag.

Ms Bruni is accused of being part of a $8 million campaign dubbed ‘Operation Save Sarko’ – an illegal plan to keep her husband out of jail. She faces ten years in jail, but denies wrongdoing. The Gaddafi trial is listed for three months, and is likely to end in early April.