Nicolas Sarkozy remains mired in scandal

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy won a small victory yesterday when it was announced that the Paris appeals court has suspended an investigation into his alleged "active corruption" of a supreme court judge.

Mr Sarkozy and his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, filed a suit to have the case annulled on the grounds that investigating magistrates had no right to tap their telephones.

The wiretaps were originally ordered in an investigation into €50 million in alleged campaign donations by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy to Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign.

Yet another scandal

The tapes revealed that Herzog was in frequent contact with judge

Gilbert Azibert

regarding a supreme court decision on whether Sarkozy’s datebooks were admissible evidence in yet another scandal involving Sarkozy – the award of a €400 million settlement to Sarkozy’s friend

Bernard Tapie

.

It will take six months to a year for the appeals court to decide on the legality of the wiretaps. In the meantime, other investigations continue, and Sarkozy’s political comeback risks being jeopardised.

Sarkozy announced his return to French politics on Facebook and a television interview a few days ago. He wants to regain leadership of the conservative UMP party, then become the right’s candidate for the 2017 presidential election. A CSA poll published on September 20th showed that 63 per cent of the French do not want Sarkozy to stand in 2017.

That doesn't seem to bother the notoriously thick-skinned Sarkozy. He says the French notion of a providential leader like Napoleon or Charles de Gaulle returning to save France in her hour of need is ridiculous. Yet he's repeatedly said he has no choice but to return to politics, that "it would be a form of abandonment to remain a spectator of France's situation."

Subjected to scrutiny

At the same time,

Sarkozy portrays himself as the victim of vengeful judges who are hell-bent on his destruction. No former president has been subjected to such scrutiny, he notes.

Sarkozy’s bid for the UMP leadership and presidential candidacy is an audacious move for a man mired in up to eight political-financial scandals, depending how one counts them.

Any benefit from the suspension of the Azibert case was arguably neutralised by a report in

Le Monde

newspaper that investigating magistrates have decided to open a new investigation into “abuse of confidence” because the UMP paid

€516,615 in fines on

Sarkozy’s behalf last year. Because he surpassed legal limits on campaign spending,

Sarkozy was required by law to pay the fines himself.

In July 2013, the UMP raised

€11

million from supporters to make an urgent down payment on

€55

million in debt,

that had been personally guaranteed by

Sarkozy.

Le Monde

also leaked the conclusions of a preliminary police report into the Bygmalion party financing scandal, which concluded that the events company, founded by close aides to the former UMP leader Jean-Francois Cop

é,

submitted

€18.5

million in false invoices attributing the cost of

Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign rallies to party conventions instead.

Sarkozy says he erred in the past by always wanting to do everything himself. At the same time, he claims he knew nothing of the fake invoices and did not even learn of Bygmalion’s existence until after the campaign.

Pierre Godet, the accountant responsible for certifying

Sarkozy’s campaign expenses, addressed a memorandum to the then president in April 2012 warning him of the “extremely grave consequences of surpassing the ceiling on campaign expenditure.” A text message sent by a high-ranking party official that same month said: “We’re out of money. JFC

[Copé] talked to the PR

[president of the republic] about it.”

In addition to the above-mentioned Azibert, Gadafy, Tapie and Bygmalion scandals,

Sarkozy’s reputation has been compromised by the É

lys

ée

opinion polls scandal, in which a company belonging to his former advisor Patrick Buisson was awarded

€3.3

million in contracts without competitive bidding.

The so-called “Air Cocaine” scandal involves flights taken by

Sarkozy at the expense of a wealthy businessman after he left office. The legality of

Sarkozy’s appointment of a close aide to the head of a state-owned bank is in question. And he may yet have to explain his role as budget minister

from 1993

to 1995, when commissions on arms sales to Pakistan were used to finance the French right.

‘A new way of functioning’

At a rally in January 2007 launching his first presidential campaign,

Sarkozy repeated the words “I have changed” eight times. This week, he played a variation on the same old tune, telling television viewers: “Age gives one more wisdom, more distance.” He wants to change the UMP’s name and address and calls for “a new project, a new way of functioning

. . . a new team.”

For the first ten minutes of his 40-minute television interview,

Sarkozy was a lamb. But the masque cracked and the old Sarkozy broke through, virulently critical of President Fran

çois Hollande, self-justifying, aggressive and refusing to explain why he did not reform France as he had promised during his 2007

to 2012 term in office.

But memories can be short. The most pressing question in French politics today is: will UMP members think twice before giving the party he bankrupted back to

Sarkozy?