For the first time in post-war history, a former French president is on trial for corruption: Nicolas Sarkozy appears Monday in the so-called “eavesdropping” case alongside a lawyer friend and a former senior magistrate.
Before him, only another ex-president, Jacques Chirac, had been tried – and sentenced in 2011 to two years suspended for embezzlement of public funds -, but Mr. Sarkozy is the first head of state accused of corruption.
Nicolas Sarkozy, 65, said he was “combative” in view of the trial where lawyer Thierry Herzog and retired judge Gilbert Azibert will also be tried.
For the ex-president who claims his innocence, this affair is “a scandal which will remain in the annals”.
Withdrawn from politics since his defeat in the right-wing primary at the end of 2016, Mr. Sarkozy faces ten years in prison and a million euros fine for corruption and influence peddling, like his co-convicts – also tried for violation professional secrecy.
The holding of the trial, scheduled to last three weeks, will depend on the COVID-19 epidemic which has disrupted the hearings of other cases in Paris in recent weeks, and on a request for referral for medical reasons, filed by Judge Azibert , 73 years old.
The “eavesdropping” affair has its origins in another legal dossier which threatens Nicolas Sarkozy: the suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign.
In this context, the judges had decided, in September 2013, to place the former president on wiretap, and discovered, in early 2014, that he was using a secret line, under the pseudonym “Paul Bismuth”, to communicate with his lawyer Thierry Herzog.
According to the prosecution, some of their conversations revealed the existence of a corruption pact: Nicolas Sarkozy has, through Mr.e Herzog, considered giving a “helping hand” to Mr. Azibert to help him obtain a post in the Principality of Monaco which he coveted, but which he never obtained.
In return, according to the prosecution, this senior magistrate provided information, covered by secrecy, on a procedure initiated in Cassation by Mr. Sarkozy on the sidelines of another file (Bettencourt case), and tried to influence his colleagues.
After having benefited from a dismissal in the Bettencourt affair at the end of 2013, Nicolas Sarkozy had indeed seized the Court of Cassation to cancel the seizure of his presidential agendas, which may be of interest to justice in other proceedings.
In the flowery discussions with his lawyer, the basis of the accusation, the former president undertook to intervene in favor of Judge Azibert. “Me, I make him go up”, “I will help him”, he said thus to Mr.e Herzog.
Shortly afterwards, he declared that he had given up making “the approach” to the Monegasque authorities. For investigators, this turnaround could come from the discovery, by the two men, that their unofficial phones were tapped.
In a severe indictment in October 2017, the PNF (National Financial Prosecutor’s Office) compared the methods of Nicolas Sarkozy to those of “an experienced delinquent”.
The three defendants contest any “corruption pact”.
“Mr. Azibert did not get anything, I did not take any action and I was dismissed by the Court of Cassation ”concerning the agendas, argued the former president in 2014.
“I will explain myself to the court because I have always faced my obligations”, he reaffirmed recently on the French channel BFMTV, swearing: “I am not a rotten”.
Nicolas Sarkozy has never ceased to denounce a political instrumentalisation of justice, increasing the number of appeals. Without success.
The validation of the tapping, in March 2016, by the highest judicial court had constituted a major defeat for the former president, who considered that the transcription of exchanges between a lawyer and his client was illegal.
This issue will again be hotly debated during the trial.
Another trial awaits Nicolas Sarkozy in the spring: that of the Bygmalion affair on his campaign costs for the 2012 presidential election, which he had lost to the profits of the socialist François Hollande.