Sarkozy in Court: High-Flying Shenanigans Revealed in Libyan Financing Investigation

After ten years of investigations into possible Libyan financing in 2007, thirteen people have just been sent back to the criminal court. Among them, the former head of state and a former senior executive of the aeronautical group suspected of having paid undue commissions on the sidelines of a contract with Tripoli.

This is the final part of the labyrinthine investigation into the supposed Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign. Or how the sale of several Airbuses to the regime of Muammar al-Gaddafi, in power for more than forty years until his fall in 2011, would have given rise to the payment of wandering commissions, against a backdrop of suspicions of corruption and discreet intermediation. Twelve years after the first revelations of Mediapart and ten years after the opening of a judicial inquiry, the examining magistrates Aude Buresi and Virginie Tilmont have just returned thirteen people to court, including the former head of state and three of his former ministers. But also a figure less known to the general public, Edouard Ullmo, former executive of Airbus suspected of having paid undue commissions on the sidelines of the sale of twelve planes to Libya. Arrested in March 2022 in a hotel in Courchevel, the last person indicted in the case will be tried for “bribery of a foreign public official”, “criminal association” et “corruption and influence peddling laundering”. Through its presumed role, this component appears all the more explosive as it highlights the practices long in vogue within the aircraft manufacturer and its parent company EADS (now renamed Airbus Group).

Alone old