The youngest son of former Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi claims he was pressured to retract allegations about his country's funding of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign. In an exclusive interview with RFI, Saif al-Islam Kadhafi describes being approached three times to change testimony he gave to French investigators in 2018 – when he says he oversaw cash payments of $5 million to the former French president's team.
"Sarkozy has exercised pressure on me through intermediaries several times," Kadhafi told RFI in his first comments about the "Libyan financing affair" since 2011.
When RFI contacted a member of his inner circle to ask for an interview on 6 January, the response was hesitant: "I will ask the question, but it's not certain."
By late afternoon, however, Saif al-Islam had agreed to tell his version of what happened. He then sent a detailed, two-page statement in French, later supplemented with clarifications in Arabic.
His comments come as Sarkozy and 11 other defendants stand trial in Paris over alleged illegal Libyan funding.
His inner circle said that he has a deep distrust of the media, but agreed to speak now due to the opening of the trial.
Pressure to change testimony
Kadhafi described attempted pressure from Sarkozy that began after his 2018 testimony to investigating judge Serge Tournaire.
The first attempt allegedly came in 2021 through the Paris-based consultant Souha al-Bedri, who asked him to deny all claims of Libyan support for Sarkozy's campaign in exchange for help resolving his case with the International Criminal Court (ICC), where he remains wanted.
Al-Bedri rejected these claims, calling them "absolutely not true". She acknowledged past ties with Sarkozy, who acted as her lawyer in the 1980s, but said she no longer had contact with him.
In late 2022, a second approach allegedly came through Noël Dubus, an Ivorian national already implicated in both the campaign funding case and the Karachi arms contracts affair.
According to Kadhafi, Dubus visited his imprisoned brother Hannibal in Beirut, promising his release in exchange for altered testimony.
Hannibal Kadhafi has been detained in Lebanon since 2015 over the disappearance of Lebanese religious leader Moussa el-Sadr, who was last seen in Libya in August 1978.
Lebanon continues to demand information from Tripoli about his disappearance.
A third attempt came through an unnamed French person of Arab origin. who Kadhafi specified was neither Alexandre Djouhri nor Ziad Takieddine, two key figures already implicated in the investigation.
Kadhafi said he refused all attempts to alter his testimony.
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'A suitcase full of cash'
According to Kadhafi, the Libyan regime made two separate payments to Sarkozy of $2.5 million each.
The first was meant to finance Sarkozy's election campaign in exchange for promised "agreements and projects in favour of Libya".
The second payment was allegedly intended to end legal proceedings over the 1989 UTA airline bombing that killed 170 people, including 54 French citizens.
The regime also sought to remove six Libyan names from Interpol notices, including that of Abdullah Senoussi, Kadhafi's intelligence chief and brother-in-law.
“I personally supervised the money’s transfer,” Kadhafi said, alleging the money was transported in suitcases and deposited into a Geneva bank account.
The money was allegedly handed to Claude Guéant, then Sarkozy's chief of staff, by Bachir Saleh, Muammar Kadhafi's trusted treasurer, with businessman Alexandre Djouhri acting as intermediary.
Kadhafi described a scene that he said "made everyone present laugh" – where Guéant reportedly struggled to close a suitcase full of cash, resorting to standing on it.
Guéant, who spent two months in prison in 2022 after being convicted in a separate case for the misuse of public funds, has denied any involvement, and Sarkozy has dismissed the claims as baseless.
Tripoli meeting
In his exchange with RFI, Kadhafi repeated claims he first made to French investigators in 2018 about a key meeting in Tripoli.
He said that on 6 October, 2005, Sarkozy and Muammar Kadhafi discussed campaign financing.
Kadhafi also said that during this 2005 Libya visit, Sarkozy personally called Abdullah Senoussi, promising to remove his name from Interpol's wanted list upon becoming president.
"There are recordings of this conversation," Kadhafi told RFI. "Senoussi still has them."
However, despite repeated claims by Libyan officials about such evidence, French investigators have never received any recordings or documents to support the allegations.
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Sarkozy denials
Sarkozy has consistently denied receiving any Libyan funding for his presidential bid. During this month's trial, he described the accusations as baseless and rooted in a decade-long smear campaign.
"Not a single centime of Libyan money" funded the campaign, Sarkozy insisted, adding: "If anyone has the slightest evidence, I would like them to give it to me. It's exhausting having to respond to allegations that rest on nothing."
When asked by RFI about Kadhafi's latest claims, Sarkozy's lawyer Christophe Ingrain called them "not only fanciful statements, but also very opportunistic".
Ingrain argued that the accusations stem from a "vengeful narrative". He linked the family's grievances to Sarkozy's pivotal role in initiating NATO's intervention in Libya in 2011, which led to the Kadhafi regime's downfall after 42 years in power.
This intervention, strongly advocated for by then-president Sarkozy, involved airstrikes and the enforcement of a no-fly zone.
"Since the Arab Spring and NATO's intervention in Libya, Kadhafi's family has lost everything. We are truly in the context of objective revenge," Ingrain told RFI.
He rejected the allegations of a deal over the UTA bombing case, saying that: "French justice doesn't work like that." He explained that arrest warrants issued by a criminal court can only be cancelled if suspects present themselves for trial.
Money transfers
In their order referring the case to trial, French investigating magistrates compiled extensive evidence of alleged money transfers.
The document describes a network that extends beyond the role Saif al-Islam Kadhafi claims to have played, pointing to numerous networks used to move money.
It also mentions several instances of pressure being exerted on witnesses.
Kadhafi first mentioned these financing allegations in March 2011 during an interview with Euronews, and at a press conference in Tripoli before the regime's fall.
Following NATO's intervention, he demanded that Sarkozy return the money to Libya.
RFI verified Kadhafi's identity before publishing his claims. He communicated through an intermediary to avoid using international phone lines, which could reveal his location.
*All persons named in this article are presumed innocent.
This story has been adapted from the original version in French, written by Houda Ibrahim
