Nicolas Sarkozy Blames Inner Circle in Libyan Campaign Financing Appeal Trial

Nicolas Sarkozy faced his first day of interrogation at the Paris Court of Appeal on Tuesday, April 7, 2026, in the appeal trial over the alleged Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign, denying all charges and insisting that "there was not a single cent of Libyan money in my campaign." The former French president, who served as head of state from 2007 to 2012, appeared before the court in a dark suit and white shirt, placing a sheet of paper on the podium as he addressed the judges. His wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, attended the morning session for the first time in the appeal proceedings. The interrogation, conducted by court president judge Olivier Géron, lasted more than eight hours and is expected to continue throughout the week. Sarkozy opened his statement by addressing the families of victims of the 1989 UTA DC-10 bombing, who had testified the previous week, acknowledging that in their place he would have felt "the same anger, the same grief."

Sarkozy shifts blame squarely onto two former allies

The central thrust of Sarkozy's defense was to attribute responsibility for the suspicious meetings at the heart of the case to two former associates: Claude Guéant, who served as his chief of staff at the Ministry of the Interior, and Brice Hortefeux, who was then minister delegate for local authorities. Sarkozy argued that by allowing the Franco-Lebanese intermediary Ziad Takieddine to interfere in the organization of a preparatory trip to Libya in October 2005, Guéant had crossed a line. „My analysis is that Mr. Guéant overestimated the knowledge and connections of Mr. Takieddine — he must have told him that he knew everyone in Libya” — Nicolas Sarkozy via BFMTV Sarkozy said he could not understand why Guéant had agreed to dine with Abdallah Senoussi, the Libyan intelligence chief convicted in absentia for ordering the UTA bombing, during that preparatory visit. Regarding Hortefeux, who attended a separate meeting with Senoussi in December 2005 and was present in the courtroom, Sarkozy was equally blunt. „It is an error, he should not have done that” — Nicolas Sarkozy via 7sur7 Both men have previously claimed they were "trapped" by Takieddine, a version Sarkozy appeared to partially accept while still holding them accountable for their judgment. Guéant did not attend the appeal trial for health reasons.

A corruption pact Sarkozy calls implausible and false

French prosecutors allege that the meetings between Guéant, Hortefeux, and Senoussi were used to forge a corruption pact under which Libya would provide illegal financing for Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign in exchange for economic, diplomatic, and judicial concessions, including potentially lifting the arrest warrant against Senoussi. Sarkozy dismissed the entire premise as implausible. „How can anyone think that I chose a man as unpredictable as Gaddafi to obtain sulfurous financing, after an interview of half an hour? This makes no sense. I did not know Libya or the Libyans” — Nicolas Sarkozy via ABC He also called the documentary evidence supporting the pact "false" and described the intermediaries who accused him as "liars," noting that Takieddine had been convicted multiple times for lying. The investigation identified money flows totaling 6.5 (million euros) — alleged Libyan funds paid to intermediary Takieddine originating from Libyan authorities and paid into an account belonging to Takieddine, who died in September 2025, just two days before the first-instance sentence was announced. However, first-instance judges found no direct proof that those funds reached Sarkozy's campaign coffers, acquitting him of passive corruption, receiving proceeds from embezzlement, and illegal campaign financing, while convicting him solely of criminal conspiracy on the grounds that preparation alone is sufficient to constitute the offense under French law.

Twenty days in prison already served, appeal stakes remain high

The appeal trial, which opened on March 16, 2026, and is scheduled to run until late May 2026, represents a critical juncture for the former president. In September 2025, the Paris criminal court sentenced Sarkozy to five years of closed imprisonment with a deferred committal warrant and provisional execution, along with a fine of 100,000 euros, making him the first former president of the French Fifth Republic to be imprisoned. He spent approximately 20 days in prison in late 2025 before being released under judicial supervision. Both his lawyers and the prosecution appealed the verdict, for opposing reasons. The lawyer for the civil parties, Vincent Brengarth, responded sharply to Sarkozy's courtroom performance, noting that the first-instance ruling was "extremely convincing, reasoned, and detailed" and that the various interrogations in the appeal proceedings had so far failed to produce the credible explanations the families of victims were owed. Brengarth also observed what he described as a change in Sarkozy's demeanor compared to the first trial. „One senses, even if it is perhaps too early to say, a form of feverishness” — Vincent Brengarth via BFMTV

The Libyan financing affair dates to the final years of Muammar Gaddafi's regime, which ruled Libya from 1969 until its fall in 2011 following an international military intervention in which France played a significant role under Sarkozy's presidency. Abdallah Senoussi, Gaddafi's brother-in-law and head of Libyan intelligence, was convicted in absentia by a French court in 1999 for his role in the 1989 UTA DC-10 bombing, which killed 170 people over Niger. The alleged meetings between Senoussi and Sarkozy's associates took place in 2005, when Sarkozy was serving as minister of the interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin. Shukri Ghanem, a former Libyan minister who died in 2012, kept notebooks that investigators say reference amounts consistent with the alleged financing flows around the date of April 29, 2007.

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