FORMER French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been placed in custody as part of a probe into allegations he received millions of euros in illegal financing from the regime of late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy was quizzed by police at the Nanterre police station, west of Paris but he and his former chief of staff have denied wrongdoing in the case.
An investigation, under way since 2013, has examined funding for Sarkozy’s winning 2007 presidential campaign.
The case gained traction when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine claimed to Mediapart that he delivered suitcases from Libya containing €5m in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff Claude Gueant.
Investigators are also looking at claims that Gaddafi’s regime secretly gave Sarkozy €50m overall for the 2007 campaign.
Such a sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit, which was €21m at the time.
In addition, the alleged payments would violate French rules against foreign financing and declaring the source of campaign funds.
In the Mediapart interview published in November 2016, Takieddine claimed he was given €5m in Tripoli by Gaddafi’s intelligence chief on trips in late 2006 and 2007 and that he gave the money in suitcases full of cash to Sarkozy and Gueant on three occasions.
He claimed the handovers took place in the interior ministry, while Sarkozy was interior minister.
Takieddine has for years been embroiled in his own problems with French justice. He is alleged to have provided illegal funds to the campaign of conservative politician Edouard Balladur for his 1995 presidential election campaign - via commissions from the sale of French submarines to Pakistan.
Sarkozy had a complex relationship with Gaddafi. Soon after becoming the French president, Sarkozy invited the Libyan leader to France for a state visit and welcomed him with high honours.
But Sarkozy then put France in the forefront of Nato-led air strikes against Gaddafi’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime in 2011.
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