The well-informed French website “Media Part” reported that Mabrouka al-Sharif, the former assistant to Muammar Gaddafi, confirmed to the French judges that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked Gaddafi for financial support to finance his election campaign in 2007. Mabrouka explained in a written testimony that Sarkozy, who ruled France from 2007 to 2012, he repeated the same request in 2010 before losing the elections in the face of his rival, Francois Hollande. Mabrouka has resided since the collapse of the former regime in southern Algeria, and is the last witness to the financing of Sarkozy’s campaign.
In a related context, Media Part, which specializes in investigative journalism, reported that the French judiciary decided to close the file, after nine years of in-depth investigations. The judges offered the suspects to appear before a judicial panel to make their latest statements, but Sarkozy and his three ministers, Claude Guéant, Brice Hortoffe and Eric Worth, “politely refused,” according to the newspaper.
