Carla Bruni is summoned for possible indictment in the investigation into the financing of the presidential campaign of her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter is suspected of having financed his 2007 campaign with Libyan funds.
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has been summoned for possible indictment in the investigation into the 2020 retraction of intermediary Ziad Takieddine, who accuses her husband Nicolas Sarkozy of having financed his 2007 presidential campaign with Libyan funds.
According to a source close to the case, the model and singer faces prosecution for receiving stolen goods, conspiracy to commit fraud in court as part of an organized gang, and corruption of Lebanese judicial personnel.
Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy could emerge from this interrogation, the date of which has not been specified, indicted, or under the more favorable status of an assisted witness. The judicial investigation opened in May 2021 looks at the possible attempt by a dozen protagonists in this case to deceive French justice in the Libyan case, the main part of which will be judged in early 2025.
The ex-president was indicted in October, suspected of having approved these maneuvers. In April, his lawyers filed a motion to overturn this measure and, recently, a request to disorient the investigation. His wife has already been interviewed twice by investigators from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses (OCLCIFF): first as a witness in June 2023, then as a suspect at the beginning of May.
Telephone line
Recently, according to elements of the investigation of which the AFP was aware and partly revealed by Le Parisien, it is a telephone of the ex-paparazzi priestess, “Mimi” Marchand (real name Michèle Marchand), also implicated, which increased the charges against the 56-year-old artist. The financial investigating judge in charge of the case believes he has found evidence of Ms. Marchand’s use of a hidden telephone line, which she disputes.
At the beginning of December 2019, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy asked her IT technician for ” a new line completely disconnected from the rest “. He subscribed to this subscription in her name the same month. According to the judge, Mimi Marchand sent messages to the former presidential couple via this mobile phone.
One of them seems to prove that the former First Lady was informed in advance of Ms. Marchand’s trip to Beirut in mid-October 2020 for the famous interview in which Mr. Takieddine retracted, possibly for compensation.
Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy had previously said she only knew about it when the interview was published, on November 11, 2020. “Why did you lie?” the OCLCIFF investigator asked her in early May. “Even if I knew she was going (to Lebanon), I didn’t know why,” she defends herself.
“Very manipulative”
The judge also found a message sent on this famous occult line two weeks before the first wave of arrests in the case, in June 2021: Mimi Marchand announces that “a friend came home last night” and that “Everything is fine”. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy assured that she does not “see at all what (Mimi Marchand) can be talking about”.
The investigator recalls that this message follows for a few hours the trip to Germany of two protagonists in the case to hand over funds which could have been used to corrupt Lebanese magistrates to release from prison one of Gaddafi’s sons, Hannibal so that he helps exonerate Nicolas Sarkozy. “Oh my,” reacts Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, revived. “I don’t know. Cash… Hannibal Gaddafi… We’re in a sphere where I don’t know what to tell you.”
Asked again about the elements suggesting the theory of a phone belonging to her, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy replied: “Absolutely. I understand. But it’s not my number.” Before adding: “I’m trying to come up with explanations.”
Asked to conclude, Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy says she is “stupidly naive” and adds that she “feels responsible for the indictment.” “It’s me who should be,” she asserts, presenting herself as her husband’s “only contact” with Mimi Marchand, who “used my husband’s name and mine (…) to give yourself weight with your friends”, as Nicolas Sarkozy says. Mimi Marchand, she continues, “is clever, but not necessarily in the truth (…) She is very manipulative”.
When asked, the singer’s lawyer, Me Paul Mallet, did not respond.
