PARIS: French investigative magistrates on Friday ordered former president Nicolas Sarkozy and 12 others to go on trial on charges that his 2007 presidential campaign received millions in illegal financing from the government of late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
The national financial prosecutor, Jean-François Bohnert, announced that the decade-long investigation has been formally closed. The trial will run from January to April 2025, the statement said.
The case is the biggest and most shocking of multiple corruption investigations involving Sarkozy. He has been convicted in two others. He denies wrongdoing in all cases.
In the Libya case, he is charged with illegal campaign financing, embezzling, passive corruption and related counts.
Sarkozy has been under investigation in the Libya case since 2013. Investigators examined claims that Qaddafi’s government secretly gave Sarkozy 50 million euros for his winning 2007 campaign. The sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time and would violate French rules against foreign campaign financing.
The investigation gained traction when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told news site Mediapart in 2016 that he had delivered suitcases from Libya containing 5 million euros ($6.2 million) in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff. Takieddine later reversed course and Sarkozy sought to have the investigation closed.
After becoming president in 2007, Sarkozy welcomed Qaddafi to France with high honors later that year. Sarkozy then put France at the forefront of NATO-led airstrikes that helped rebel fighters topple Qaddafi’s government in 2011.
In an unrelated case, Sarkozy was sentenced to a year of house arrest for illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 reelection bid. He is free while the case is pending appeal.
He also was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling in another case and sentenced to a year of house arrest in an appeals trial in May this year. He took the case to France’s highest court, which suspended the sentence.
French former President Nicolas Sarkozy to go on trial over Libya financing for 2007 campaign
https://arab.news/mxwye
French former President Nicolas Sarkozy to go on trial over Libya financing for 2007 campaign
- Decade-long investigation formally closed
- The trial will run from January to April 2025
58 still in hospital following New Year Swiss bar blaze
- Over half of those wounded in the fire in the ski resort of Crans-Montana are in hospital
- 21 injured people were still in Swiss hospitals, including 12 in Lausanne and eight in Zurich
GENEVA: A total of 58 people are still in hospital following the deadly inferno that engulfed a Swiss bar during New Year celebrations, Switzerland’s Keystone-ATS news agency reported Tuesday.
Nearly eight weeks on from the tragedy that killed 41 people and injured 115 others, just over half of those wounded in the fire in the ski resort of Crans-Montana are in hospital.
The National Network for Disaster Medicine told ATS that as of Monday, 21 injured people were still in Swiss hospitals, including 12 in Lausanne and eight in Zurich, two of whom are still in intensive care.
Nine others were in rehabilitation clinics, including eight in Sion, capital of the southwestern Wallis region where Crans-Montana is situated.
A further 28 patients are still receiving treatment abroad: 14 in France, eight in Italy, four in Germany and two in Belgium. Those 28 include 11 Swiss nationals.
Le Constellation, a bar in upscale Crans-Montana, caught fire in the early hours of January 1. Those killed were mostly teenagers; 20 of them were minors.
Prosecutors believe the fire started when champagne bottles with sparklers attached were raised too close to the ceiling in the bar’s basement level, igniting the sound insulation foam.
While those suffering the lightest injuries were discharged in the days immediately following the blaze, on January 5, a total of 83 people were still in hospital.
The bar’s owners, French couple Jacques and Jessica Moretti, are under criminal investigation, facing charges of manslaughter by negligence, bodily harm by negligence and arson by negligence.
Two others are also under criminal investigation: Crans-Montana’s current head of public safety and a former fire safety officer in the town.
Meanwhile former Swiss president Doris Leuthard will head the Beloved Foundation, set up in response to the “outpouring of solidarity” following the tragedy, the Wallis cantonal government said Tuesday.
“The foundation’s primary goal is to provide financial assistance to the bereaved families of the deceased, all those injured, their directly-affected relatives,” plus the firefighters and first responders who dealt with the disaster, it said.
The foundation will also support eventual memorial projects.
Wallis canton has put forward an initial one million Swiss francs ($1.3 million) out of a planned 10 million donation. In total, around 17 million francs have been pledged to the foundation.
