Maravi

(HERALD) ‘Libya funded Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign’

‘Libya funded Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign’
Friday, 04 May 2012 00:00

TUNIS — The late Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime funded French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign, lawyers for former Libyan prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmudi said yesterday, quoting their client.

“Muammar Gaddafi, his regime and the officials who worked with him financed Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007,” lawyer Bechir Essed told reporters in Tunis, where Mahmudi is detained, mentioning the sum of some 50 million euros (US$65 million). Essed’s claims came after the French Mediapart website published a document on Saturday which it said showed Libya’s financing of Sarkozy’s campaign.

Sarkozy has angrily dismissed Mediapart’s document as a deliberate forgery timed to destabilise his re-election campaign and is taking legal action against the website.
According to Essed, the deal was concluded by former Libyan intelligence chief Moussa Kussa on the instructions of Kadhafi and that “documents proving the transaction exist.”

Another lawyer for Mahmudi, who is facing two demands for extradition to Tripoli, confirmed the claim, adding that his client believes Sarkozy is behind his detention in Tunisia.

“My arrest and my detention in Tunisia were instigated by the French president so that the details of the financing of his 2007 campaign are not revealed,” Mahmudi said, according to his lawyer Mabrouk Kourchid.

A Tunisian court in February cleared Mahmudi of crossing illegally into Tunisia as he fled Libya last year but kept him in prison.

He remains the subject of two extradition requests from Libya, and Kourchid said he had been admitted to hospital on Wednesday after suffering a haemorrhage.
Mediapart on Saturday posted what it said was a 2006 document signed by Kussa referring to an “agreement in principle to support the 2007 campaign for the candidate for the presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, for a sum equivalent to 50 million euros.”
Sarkozy, who faces a tough second-round vote on Sunday against Socialist candidate Francois Hollande in his bid to win a second presidential term, dismissed it as a “crude forgery” and said he was taking legal action against Mediapart. — AFP.

Labels: FRANCE, LIBYA, MUAMMAR AL-GADDAFI, SARKOZY

posted by MrK @ 3:50 PM