LONDON: A French businessman arrested in connection with a probe into the suspected financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign by the Qaddafi family has been released on bail by a London court.
Alexandre Djouhri, 58, was detained on a European arrest warrant over allegations of fraud and money laundering when he arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport on Sunday. His bail conditions include a security payment of £1 million and the surrender of his passport. He has also been instructed to live within a specified area of London as he awaits a formal extradition hearing in the UK on April 17.
Djouhri, who has dual French and Algerian nationality, has had dealings with north Africa for two decades and is well-know to France’s right-wing political establishment. According to French media reports, he has long acted as a go-between for business and political figures in France and North Africa.
Djouhri has refused to respond to summons for questioning in Paris over an inquiry that was launched four years ago into claims by former members of the Libyan regime that he funnelled tens of millions of euros from the now-deceased Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to Sarkozy during his successful 2007 election campaign.
Qaddafi’s son, Seif Al-Islam, said: “Sarkozy has to give back the money he accepted from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We financed his campaign and we have the proof,” The Times reported.
Sarkozy, who has not been charged, attributed the claims to retaliation by Libyan regime members for his participation in the US-led intervention that ended Qaddafi’s 41-year rule.
Claude Guéant, his chief of staff at the time, was formally accused of tax evasion and forgery by judges investigating the alleged links between his former boss and the Qaddafi regime.
A French-Lebanese businessman, Ziad Takieddine, who introduced Sarkozy to Qaddafi, claimed he handed over cases of cash amounting to several million euros to Guéant and the former French leader in late 2006 and early 2007.
Speaking in court on Wednesday, Djouhri’s lawyer Mark Summers said “As far as the main allegations are concerned, the understanding is that there hasn’t been any evidence uncovered.”
He claimed there was an “overtly political genesis” to the allegations.
He claimed that Djouhri, who has been a resident of Geneva, Switzerland since the 1990s is the director of a company dealing in sanitation, water treatment and solar energy, earring around £200,000 per year.
Djouhri has acted as an intermediary for Sarkozy on several occasions, including negotiations with Qaddafi over the release of Bulgarian nurses detained in Tripoli in 2007 and in the former French president’s divorce settlement with Cécilia Attias.
