Alexandre Djouhri handed over to the French judicial authorities

Alexandre Djouhri, key protagonist of the investigation into suspicions of Libyan funding for Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007, was handed over to French judicial authorities on his arrival Thursday evening at Roissy airport, Agence France learned -Press (AFP) from judicial and airport sources, confirming information from BFM-TV.

The 60-year-old businessman, which the British justice ordered the delivery to France, was on Thursday evening in the police headquarters at the border of Paris airport and should be presented to the magistrates in the next twenty-four hours.

The Franco-Algerian businessman was arrested in January 2018 at London airport under European arrest warrants issued by French justice, notably for “Misappropriation of public funds” and ” corruption “. He had been placed under house arrest in the British capital, after paying bail of 1.13 million euros.

Sale of a villa on the French Riviera

After two years of legal battle, a British court confirmed, on January 22, the decision made in February 2019 by the Westminster court to hand it over to French anti-corruption magistrates.

Alexandre Djouhri is eagerly awaited by French magistrates, who wish to indict him, the investigations having revealed several suspicious financial flows implicating him in the Libyan affair.

The name of this friend of former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, then of Claude Guéant, ex-minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, appeared in the investigation for the sale in 2009 of a villa located in Mougins, on the Coast d’Azur, to a Libyan fund managed by Bachir Saleh, former dignitary of the Gaddafi regime.

Suspicions of Claude Guéant’s involvement

He is suspected of having been, behind several nominees, the true owner and of having sold it at an overvalued price, making it possible to hide possible hidden payments from the regime. “It’s imagination and machination, I never had a villa as a nominee and I never sold a villa to Bachir Saleh”, he defended himself last March on LCI.

During a search of his home in Geneva in March 2015, the discovery of an RIB in the name of Mr. Guéant also intrigued the magistrates. They suspect the right arm of Nicolas Sarkozy to have received 500,000 euros to compensate various interventions in favor of Mr. Djouhri, in particular with EADS (now Airbus Group), to whom the businessman would have claimed several million euros in commissions for the sale of planes to Libya. Claude Guéant has always maintained that this sum was the fruit of the sale of two paintings of Flemish painting.

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