Karachi affair link
Then there were the declarations of Ziad Takieddine, a Lebanese-French arms broker with links to high-ranking officials on the French political right, including Sarkozy’s circle. Beginning in 2011, Takieddine was questioned multiple times by investigators probing an arms sale scandal known as the Karachi affair. During one hearing, Takieddine mentioned €50 million in Libyan financial aid to Sarkozy’s presidential campaign, according to the financial prosecution.
Takieddine told Mediapart in 2018 that he had introduced Sarkozy to Gaddafi and personally transported “suitcases” of money between Libya and France.
Takieddine was later sentenced to five years in prison over the Karachi affair, but fled France in 2020 — before authorities could put him behind bars — for Lebanon, which does not extradite its citizens.
While in Lebanon, Takieddine strangely retracted his incriminating testimony during an interview with French television channel BFMTV and weekly Paris Match. He later reversed course again, claiming his statements had been taken out of context.
Authorities are investigating whether those changes of heart could have been motivated by witness tampering. Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, have been formally placed under investigation in relation to that probe.
Takieddine will be tried in absentia alongside Sarkozy on charges including complicity in illegal campaign financing, money laundering and passive corruption.
Many of Sarkozy’s former closest associates, including two former interior ministers, Claude Guéant and Brice Hortefeux, as well as his former Budget Minister Eric Woerth — now a lawmaker for President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party — are also on trial for their alleged involvement in the scheme. All three have publicly denied wrongdoing.
This is the third case to bring Sarkozy to trial since he left the Elysée in 2012. In 2021, he was convicted of knowingly exceeding spending limits during his second presidential campaign in 2012, which he lost to François Hollande. An appeals court upheld the ruling, but Sarkozy has taken the case to the highest court in France that hears criminal appeals, and is still presumed innocent.