French magistrates have ordered former president Nicolas Sarkozy and 12 others to go on trial on charges that his 2007 presidential campaign received millions in illegal financing from the government of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
The national financial prosecutor, Jean-Francois Bohnert, announced that the decade-long investigation has been formally closed. The trial will run from January to April 2025, the statement said.
The case is the biggest of multiple corruption investigations involving Sarkozy. He has been convicted in two others. He denies wrongdoing in all cases.
In the Libya case, he is charged with illegal campaign financing, embezzling, passive corruption and related counts. Sarkozy has been under investigation in the Libya case since 2013. Investigators examined claims that Gaddafi's government secretly gave Sarkozy 50 million euros (£42 million) for his winning 2007 campaign.
The sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time and would violate French rules against foreign campaign financing.
The investigation gained traction when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told news site Mediapart in 2016 that he had delivered suitcases from Libya containing five million euros (£4.2 million) in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff. Takieddine later reversed course and Sarkozy sought to have the investigation closed.
In May, the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) demanded that Sarkozy be tried, citing charges against him of "concealment of laundering public funds, passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy with a view to committing a crime punishable by 10 years in jail". Investigating magistrates, who had the last word, gave the go-ahead for a trial, the PNF said.
After becoming president in 2007, Sarkozy welcomed Gaddafi to France with high honours later that year. Sarkozy then put France at the forefront of Nato-led air strikes that helped rebel fighters topple Gaddafi's government in 2011.
In an unrelated case, Sarkozy was sentenced to a year under house arrest for illegal campaign financing of his unsuccessful 2012 re-election bid. He is free while the case is pending appeal.
He was also found guilty of corruption and influence peddling in another case and sentenced to a year under house arrest in an appeals trial in May this year. He took the case to France's highest court, which suspended the sentence.
Associated Press
