The Sarkozy affair

22:17Bakasy tells voters he wants to get France working again. He says he'll be the champion of la France qui se lève tôt, the France that wakes up early. He says he wants to be the president of human rights, that if he's elected, he'll refuse to be an accomplice to any dictatorship in the world. And his pitch really lands with voters. Hello, welcome to a BBC News special. I'm John Sopel in Paris. The French people have decided Nicolas Sarkozy will succeed Jacques Chirac to become France's next president. On May 6th, 2007, Sarkozy wins the election. It's the culmination of his dream. He's about to start one of the most powerful jobs in the world.

23:12But as he enters the Elysee Palace, it's also the start of problems that have pursued him to this day. Problems which could send him to jail.

23:26In the early days of his presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy is all action. He sets about reforming France. And as he put it, helping French people to work more, to earn more. But then in 2008, global events get in the way. Financial markets across the world have plummeted in spite of efforts by the government. We were in the midst of the financial crisis. At this point, Christine Lagarde is Sarkozy's finance minister. Here, more than 93 billion pounds was wiped off the value of shares. the global economy has gone into freefall. But Sarkozy seizes the situation by the scruff of its neck. Confidence was drifting.

24:11Banks were in the balance. He struck up a particular friendship at that moment with Gordon Brown. It's quite an unusual pairing. What do you think was behind that friendship? I think there were two human beings confronted to a phenomenal crisis with both the same intention to resolve the issues and to do it in the best interest of their people. I think people don't really remember that well, that Sarkozy and Gordon Brown had a kind of bromance for a while. President Sarkozy, you are truly a force of nature. It was a very happy couple. Lagarde believes that Sarkozy's action here is fundamental.

24:46She says he helped save the global economy from complete collapse. We had sometimes meetings at the presidential palace at 4am in the morning when there was an imminent crisis. And I've seen him in some of those circumstances completely calm, completely open to the arguments, taking a distance, considering the options, asking more questions, thinking about it and helping us in the right direction. So this is, I think it's a side of him that not so many people know about, but I've seen it several times. These are still the early days of Sarkozy's five-year presidency and the activity is fast and furious.

25:30And in the middle of it all, he even divorces his wife, Cecilia, and then in short order, he meets and marries an Italian supermodel, Carla Bruni. It's a lot.

25:46But quietly in the background, stories begin to emerge in the French press. Stories that in the noise of the Sarkozy presidency, few people may have noticed. There's some of the earliest reports about the money that had been spent in his presidential campaign. newspapers report that Sarkozy's 2007 campaign was the most expensive in French history at first nobody's saying there's anything unusual about any of this just that lots of money was spent but gradually the question of the campaign finances begins to attract more attention this is journalist Fabrice Afi the suspicion was that there had been mountains of cash, bundles of banknotes, which were used to pay the people on the campaign without any of it being declared.

26:41Now, this is important because campaign funding is strictly controlled in France. There's a limit to how much you can spend. And in 2007, that was 21.5 million euros. And Sarkozy's campaign was right on the limit. At the very end of the campaign, in 2007, it emerged that large amounts of high-denomination cash were still sitting in the cupboards of Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign team and campaign headquarters. These were 200 euros and 500 euro notes. There's so much cash left over at the end of the election, so many big banknotes, that the campaign managers don't know what to do with them. The treasurer and his deputy said there was so much of it that they even considered destroying it.

27:30It's not clear what they did do with this cash in the end. Sarkozy's 2007 campaign says that its finances have all been OK'd and signed off. And the Treasurer says this extra cash was sent in as anonymous donations. But the judge in Sarkozy's trial says that nobody working on the campaign remembers receiving any envelopes of cash in the party mailroom. If that's true, where did all this cash come from? This is the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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29:12Personal finance can feel like a pop quiz you didn't study for. This podcast is your study guide. On NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast, you'll hear from trusted journalists who explain the why behind major financial decisions. You'll get research-backed insights and clear pros and cons, whether you're planning a big purchase or just want to grow your wealth. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast on your favourite podcast app. I'm Tristan Redman and this is The Sarkozy Affair.

29:51This is Danielle Klein again. Her brother was killed in the plane bombing. At this point in our story, it's December 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy has been president for six months, and his romance with Carla Bruni is blossoming. Danielle's on her scooter in Paris. She's on her way to work.

30:13Suddenly, there are police everywhere. Danielle sees a long convoy of cars and the police ask her to move aside. I realise it's Colonel Gaddafi in the streets of Paris, my city, and I'm being stopped by the police to let pass this dictator who killed my brother.

30:36Gaddafi's been invited to Paris on a three-day state visit. He pitches his Bedouin tent next door to the Elysee and he meets Sarkozy at the palace. He crunches up the gravel courtyard, the two men shake hands and they wave for the cameras. Meanwhile, Danielle's niece Melanie, who lost her father in the plane bombing, is watching it all. I was in New York. I was spending a year in New York for my studies and I had some French friends. They were watching TV and suddenly I didn't have the sound. I just saw the famous images of Gaddafi shaking hands with Sarkozy. I was telling myself, wow, I think I didn't understand something.

31:24I thought Gaddafi was really bad. It was evil. And because my French president is shaking hands with him, maybe I didn't understand something. Like, I don't understand my own story. Why is he here? Back in Paris, Melanie's aunt, Danielle, has an idea.

31:49Our little group of families, we took out our placards with the photos of our brothers and sisters, dads and mums. Every time he went somewhere, we decided we would go with our placards. You were running around Paris following Gaddafi. And people notice, first the media and then the Elysee. The families are invited to the palace to meet the president just after Gaddafi leaves, and it's the first time that any French president has agreed to meet them. When Sarkozy arrives, he's attentive. The first thing he said to us, I remember it very well, was, you're amazing people, that he understood us and that it must have been hard for us to see Gaddafi.

32:35Then he said, you are at Elysee, make the most of it. What can I do for you? They hadn't expected to be asked anything like this and they don't really have any questions up their sleeve. Why not a visit to the crash site in the Sahara? That would be great. It's not somewhere they could get on their own steam.

32:57He promised us the presidential plane, Danielle told me. And what about outstanding compensation for some of the families? Yep, no problem. That would be sorted too. None of these promises ever materialised, Danielle says. But in the moment, she was impressed. Fast forward a few years. It's 2011 and Gaddafi's world has changed dramatically since that visit to Paris. The Arab Spring has reached Libya and his government is under threat. The authoritarian presidents of Tunisia and Egypt have already been toppled. Sarkozy is one of the very first Western leaders to back the Libyan rebels against Gaddafi.

33:46Gaddafi launches a counter-offensive. I was in Libya back then and I witnessed the ferocity of Gaddafi's forces firsthand.

34:03All right, let's go. Out, out. Gaddafi's military is advancing, and it's feared there could be a massacre of civilians in the city of Benghazi. Sarkozy responds. He assembles an international coalition led by France to protect the rebel-held city with airstrikes. And it's an unusual position to take because French presidents have often opposed military interventions in the region. Back in Tripoli, international journalists are covering the war from the side of the Libyan government. Gaddafi's son gives an exclusive interview to the channel Euronews. Saif al-Islam is asked his opinion of President Sarkozy, and he drops a bombshell.

34:48Sarkozy must repay Libya the money he took for his election campaign. We financed his election campaign, and we have all details and we're ready to publish them. This is a huge allegation, and it comes out of almost nowhere. The first thing we ask of this clown, Sarkozy, is to repay this money to the Libyan people. We helped him become president so that he would help the Libyan people, but he's disappointed us. And very soon we'll publish all the details and the documents and the bank pay slips. The Elysee strongly denies it, and the French press are reluctant to take it too seriously, because the Gaddafis have got plenty of reasons to sling mud at Sarkozy.

35:29And then one day in October 2011, a NATO airstrike hits a road convoy in central Libya. A short while later, Muammar Gaddafi is found hiding, injured in a drainpipe near the wreckage of the convoy. A mob descends on him. And in the chaos, Gaddafi is murdered. It's a brutal end to his 40-year dictatorship. But in the elation that followed, there was one detail that didn't gain much attention. The plane that fired on Gaddafi's convoy and that led to the mob, that led to the dictator's murder. It was a jet of the NATO coalition and it was from the French Air Force. Back in France, Fabrice Arfi receives a message.

36:21One lovely day in 2011, I received a very short email. It's from someone I don't know. And they say, I might have something about someone you're interested in. What was your reaction when you got this email? I didn't pause for two seconds. I knew we had to go, travel to a foreign country. I won't say which in order to protect my sources, but we had to go and see. Fabrice and his reporting partner, Carl Lasquet, meet their source and they get their hands on a hard drive. It's fascinating, this hard disk. It's like a sort of Alibaba's cave and there are 19 ,000 documents. Fabrice now has the digital archive of a man called Ziad Takedin.

37:06And he's an important character in this story. Takedin is a Lebanese businessman. He's not well known to the public, but he is well known as a fixer and a middleman in some circles at the top of French politics.

37:23Our stroke of luck is that Ziyad Akedin is what you'd call a pedant. When he has a meeting, he writes a preparatory note. When he's had the meeting, he writes a report about it. Yes, when he has handwritten notes, he scans them. There are documents in French and in Arabic. Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Libya. That's his field of activity. There's his correspondence. There are holiday photos, lots of photos, with very well-known politicians. There are details of his offshore companies. There are his bank accounts. As Fabrice digs, one name keeps coming up. He's someone we've already heard about in this story, back in 2005.

38:11And if you remember, back then, Abdullah Senoussi, Gaddafi's number two, met with Sarkozy's number two, Claude Guayant, in Tripoli.

38:23He was the man who authorized terrorism when Libya was a terrorist state. Lockerbie, in the case of Great Britain, and what's known as the DC-10 UTA bombing, in the case of France. Fabrice says that Tachydine is a linchpin in all of this. Both the high-ranking French officials who met with Sanussi in secret in 2005 have said that they knew Tachydine and that he was present during those meetings. All of this could be circumstantial, tangential of course. So Fabrice keeps digging and he gets his hands on a new document. A document which is still contested and will become hugely significant.

39:07It's a very interesting document which backed up everything we had so far. And it showed that in 2006, Gaddafi's administration had an agreement to fund, one year later, the election campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy, to the tune of 50 million euros. It looks like an official Libyan government document dated 2006 and signed by one of Gaddafi's closest advisers. If true, this document would confirm the allegations already made by Gaddafi's son in that interview with Euronews. Fabrice had to be sure it was genuine. He launched a series of extensive checks to verify it. The authenticity of this document has been disputed ever since.

39:55Sarkozy says it's a forgery and he sued Mediapart three times in court. He lost all three cases. But then, in Sarkozy's trial, its credibility was once again called into question. Fabrice believes there's enough evidence that it's authentic. But at this point, he's left with a difficult choice. Because by the time he's ready to publish, it's the most sensitive possible moment. It's the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign, and Sarkozy is seeking re-election. We knew very well that revealing this in the middle of the presidential campaign, we would be criticised. The information, they thought, was too important to sit on.

40:41So Fabrice and his colleagues decide to publish. On the campaign trail, Sarkozy is asked by the French TV channel Tf1 about the Libya allegations. Is it true, he's asked, that Colonel Gaddafi financed him last time round in 2007? It's grotesque, he says. To be questioned about what Gaddafi or his son, a regime of dictators with no credibility, he says public debate has reached a new low.

41:21A few days later, Nicolas Sarkozy loses the election to François Hollande. And media part, he believes, is partly to blame. It's a humiliation.

41:38A suitcase like this, it opens like this. And the money is inside. This is Ziad Taqedin, the alleged Lebanese middleman. And he's talking on camera. Because after Sarkozy is voted out of office, Taqedin decides to tell his story to France Television. And it involves a suitcase full of cash. There is nothing in it but money. There's roughly, I think, one and a half million. Notes of 500 euros and a few 200. A few bundles of 200. What Takudin is saying here is highly contested. It's been the subject of a defamation case which he lost. Takudin himself has retracted the words in disputed circumstances.

42:28Nonetheless, what he's saying here is relevant to the allegations against the Sarkozy campaign. His words have been read out in court by judges. Mr Sanoussi asks me if I can be the one to transport some of this money. Taqedin says that back in 2005, Abdel Sanusi, Gaddafi's number two, asked him to carry three suitcases of cash back to France. He asks me because he trusts me. So I take it and I deliver it. Taqedin says he'd pick up a suitcase in Tripoli and bring it to Paris on a scheduled flight. And then when he'd landed, he'd walk straight through customs. He'd get into a car at the airport and head for central Paris, to the interior ministry.

43:16I get out of the car with the suitcase and I go in through the main door. I know I'm expected, so I go straight in. Just opposite the entrance, there's the main staircase. And on the first floor, the office of the interior ministry. Now, I don't need to remind you who was working in the interior ministry at the time of these supposed deliveries. But I will say that Sarkozy and his entourage have denied receiving any of them. But crucially, in the political world, these allegations have an impact because they surface just as Sarkozy's been out of office for a few years and is trying to engineer a comeback.

43:53It's 2016 and he's hoping to win a primary to run for president again. There's a big debate on the French TV channel France 2 and it's hosted by one of France's best-known news anchors, David Pujadas. Pujadas asked Sarkozy about Takedin's accusation.

44:22Sarkozy looks absolutely furious. What an indignity, he says. A few days later, Sarkozy comes in third place in the primary. There will be no comeback. But if the former president is worried about indignities, there are more of those to come. In March 2018, he's questioned by police for 25 hours and then placed under formal investigation over the Gaddafi allegations. In the French system, that's like being charged. Sarkozy is going to face a trial over his links to Muammar Gaddafi. I'm Alain Manc. I do a lot of things. This is Alain Manc, one of Nicolas Sarkozy's oldest friends. We're in his huge Paris office on the Avenue Georges V.

45:18It's one of the fanciest streets in the city, right next to the famous cabaret club, The Crazy Horse. Nicolas Sarkozy, je le connais depuis 1986 I've known Nicolas Sarkozy since 1986 That's 40 years, so I know him very well We talked almost every day and saw each other about once a week We talked about everything Work, jokes, women, life, everything Manc has advised French presidents from François Mitterrand in the 80s and 90s all the way to Emmanuel Macron today. He has a nickname, the Evening Visitor, because he's a regular after-hours at the Elysee. If anyone knows how it works at the top, it's Alain Manc.

46:09What do you know about Nicolas Sarkozy's relationship with Muammar Gaddafi?

46:19Monsieur Manc tells me that one Sunday, shortly after Sarkozy's election, He was with the president and his then-wife Cecilia. Manc says Sarkozy was in the middle of a tough negotiation with Gaddafi about a prisoner release. But Manc didn't get the feeling there was anything cosy about the exchanges between the two men. He says Gaddafi was negotiating hard. I asked Manc if he believed Sarkozy had taken money from Libya.

46:51Personally, I've never believed it. Not because I'm naive, but because if you are a politician on the French right and you believe you need illicit money for an election campaign, you don't go to Gaddafi. There were systems in place for this on the French right to get money from Africa. Sarkozy is an intelligent man. Why would he give himself problems by negotiating with a crazy tyrant? One of the central characters in the Sarkozy-Qaddafi case is this man, Ziyad Taqedin. Did you know Ziyad Taqedin? What do you mean? I know there are people you shouldn't meet. Did you advise Nicolas Sarkozy to stay away from Ziyad Taqedin?

47:37I often said to him that there are people you shouldn't meet, many times. Nicolas Sarkozy's mistake was keeping people around him who weren't reputable. I think there are people around him whom he should never have associated with. Monsieur Mank, what I'm hearing you say is that Mr Sarkozy is guilty really only of surrounding himself or having acquaintances with people who have harmed him. He's bad at choosing his friends.

48:13I think Nicolas Sarkozy is a man who is too kind. He never got rid of people he should have got rid of. Before we get to the court case, let's take a time out. Because at the trial, there are some important voices who are missing. We're talking about people with salient information who can't be there. Some of them we'll never hear from again. First up, there's someone called Shukri Ghanem. He was Gaddafi's oil minister. In 2012, after the Gaddafi government fell, he was found dead in Vienna, floating in the Danube River. Austrian investigators say he died of a heart attack. There are people who question that.

48:58After he died, the police found his diaries, and inside them, Ghanem had written in detail about an alleged deal to finance Sarkozy's 2007 campaign. His body was discovered in the river the day after the media part allegations were first published. And then there's Bashir Saleh. He's one of Gaddafi's closest aides. He's still alive and he knows a lot of things. He won't be at the trial because he's a fugitive in South Africa. His means of escaping from Libya to France and then to South Africa are obscure. There have been allegations during Sarkozy's trial that the French government was somehow involved.

49:41Once he arrived in South Africa, someone tried to kill him. He survived, but he's still a fugitive. And then there's Zian Takidin, the middleman. Now, he recanted those allegations about suitcases of cash in a TV interview with the French channel BFM in 2020. Sitting on a little wall in a park, he says... Mr Sarkozy never received any campaign funding from Muammar Gaddafi. But the interview was so bizarre that the police were curious. They examined it and placed both Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, under formal investigation for witness tampering. Sarkozy and Bruni both deny it. But either way, Takudin definitely won't be coming to the trial because he's dead, of natural causes while a fugitive in Lebanon.

50:37OK, time out over. It's time for the trial. Sarkozy is in the dock, accused of criminal conspiracy, corruption and illegal campaign financing. He denies all the charges and says he's the victim of a politically motivated attack from inside the French judiciary. Daniel is also in court to give a victim statement because the alleged conspiracy involves Abdullah Sanousi, the man convicted of her brother's murder. What was it like the day that you testified in court? What happened? It's a moment we were all waiting for. We were all there. I had gone over it all well in my head. I was really keen to speak.

51:25Mr Sarkozy was only a metre and a half away from us.

51:36Danielle tells the court that her brother Jean-Pierre was fascinated with politics, how the families of the DC-10 victims had fought hard for years, and how painful it was to learn that high-ranking members of the government had met face-to-face with Abdullah Sanoussi.

51:55She calls them cowards. When Danielle finished talking, she says Sarkozy tried to respond. And the judge immediately put him in his place and said, Mr Sarkozy, sit down. It's not your turn to speak now. It's the victims of the DC-10. It's his women's turn to speak.

52:21Danielle and Melanie wait for the verdicts for the four charges against Sarkozy. The first one, corruption, not guilty. The second, illegal campaign financing, not guilty. The third, embezzlement of public funds, not guilty. And then the fourth charge, conspiracy to commit a crime. Sarkozy is found guilty. Guilty of plotting to obtain funding from a foreign state, the quid pro quo, judges say, was helping Libya gain acceptance on the world stage and turning a blind eye to Abdullah Sanusi's terrorism conviction. The judge calls it a crime of, quote, exceptional seriousness. And the sentence is five years in jail.

53:08And when she said Nicolas Sarkozy's sentence, Nobody speak, but there was... Because there were so many people in the room, I heard the... Very loud. I will keep this moment in me forever. There'll be no electronic tag for Sarkozy, no house arrest. He'll be the first and only president of the Fifth Republic to go to jail. immediately after the verdict Sarkozy speaks to reporters if they absolutely want me to sleep in prison I will sleep in prison but with my head held high I am innocent this injustice is a scandal He says he'll appeal. And in France, if you appeal, you're considered innocent until all the appeals are finished.

54:11But controversially, the court instructs Sarkozy to present himself to prison soon. It's a highly unusual move. In the days that follow, Sarkozy says that judges are out to destroy him.

54:29A former president on his way to prison. Nicolas Sarkozy left his home this morning and, to cries of support from a small crowd, walked with his wife Carla Bruni down to a waiting car. He arrives at the prison with pullovers, earplugs and a novel. And not just any novel, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It's maybe the most famous revenge novel ever written. The novel is vast, more than a thousand pages. The hero, Edmund Dantes, escapes from his wrongful imprisonment, he becomes wildly rich, and he destroys his enemies. It left you wondering if the vast novel of Nicolas Sarkozy's life might still have a few chapters left to be written.

55:38It's March the 16th, 2026, and I'm back in court in Paris, and I'm watching Sarkozy arrive for his appeal trial. He walks in a free man. He's been released from prison to fight the case, and everything is still to play for. Sarkozy's been pretty busy. He's written a book. It took him three weeks. A memoir about his 20 days in prison. And it became a number one bestseller. He went on a book tour. He opened up to a podcaster about finding God and discovering the power of prayer. But now he's back in court. And he could emerge from this retrial completely cleared or sentenced to 10 years behind bars.

56:24Nicholas Sarkozy's appeal will run until June and the verdict will come in the autumn. In the meantime, Danielle Klein is going to court almost every day and she says the last 35 years have been overwhelming.

56:41We were facing a monster of a political scandal. So many well-known and higher-ranking French people were involved. A little like the Epstein affair today. So many people implicated in the story that it's hard to believe. Sticking at it has become Danielle's mission. We mustn't give up. We mustn't let go. We mustn't think that we're so small in the face of all this. And in spite of everything that's happened, Nicolas Sarkozy still has supporters in the very highest places. With retrospect, does any of this change how you feel about his presidency? No. This is Christine Lagarde. I'm very proud to have served under his leadership, and I'm very proud of what we achieved at a time of a financial crisis that could have completely embroiled the entire global economy.

57:42And that's what I want to remember. When did you last speak to Nicolas Sarkozy? When he went to prison, I sent him a text message from Bulgaria, where I was, in a church called St. Nicholas. How is he? How is he? Well, you will find out. And Fabrice Afi, what does he make of the man he spent most of his career investigating? You and your reporting partners have been jousting with him now for a long time, almost 15 years. Is there any part of you that admires his tenacity? I could admire his tenacity if he weren't my former president. He's an impressive person. I could tell you about my exchange with him in court.

58:31Oh, yeah. Go on, please. Fabrice tells me a story. During the first trial, on a courtroom break, Sarkozy summons Fabrice over for a chat. But it's the first time Fabrice has ever actually spoken with him after 15 years of asking for an interview. Nicolas Sarkozy, who's very tactile, he put his hand on my forearm and said, but Mr Arfi, it's nothing personal against you. And then he said something to me, something I've been asking myself about ever since. But you know, Mr Arfi, when you're losing, you have to admit it. You have to be a good sport. And with that, Sarkozy was off. And I thought to myself, who was he talking to?

59:22Was he talking to me? Or was he talking to his subconscious? I still don't understand what he wanted to tell me. We asked Nicolas Sarkozy if he'd speak to us for this programme, and he declined.

59:40You've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service. The Sarkozy Affair was presented by me, Tristan Redman. The producer was Adele Armstrong. And the sound designer was Peregrine Andrews. The editor was Penny Murphy.

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