French courts force Sarkozy to confront his past

You might think it odd that in his newly-published memoir, Passions, in which he reflects on his long political career, culminating in five years as President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy found no space for the legal case that could result in his being sentenced to as long as 10 years in jail. But then Sarko has never been one to stress the negative. Like Jiminy Cricket, whom in some ways he resembles, he much prefers to accentuate the positive, seeing himself as a man of destiny who but for the perfidy of others would have led his country into a new Golden Age.

The truth, however, is that the law is catching up with him, and the King of Bling will shortly end up in court charged with corruption and abuse of power. The French can hardly wait.

On this occasion, with the number of scandals to which the former President is linked running into double figures, the suggestion is that a key position in Monaco (nominally an independent state) was offered to a senior judge, Gilbert Azibert, in exchange for information relating to a probe into the suggestion that Sarkozy had accepted illicit payments from the L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt to boost his run for the Élysée in 2007.

Bettencourt – the richest woman in the world, with a fortune of some £45 billion – was suffering from dementia at the time and has since died, and the case was dropped. But detectives, monitoring Sarkozy’s telephone calls in pursuance of yet another investigation (in which it was alleged that the Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi had made an unlawful £45m donation to the President’s campaign fund), were intrigued by talk of a new job for Azibert.

It is this – the equivalent, some might say, of the charge of tax evasion brought by the FBI against the gangster Al Capone – that has landed Sarkozy in the dock. He strenuously denies that he offered anything untoward to the judge, who also faces prosecution along with Sarko’s lawyer, Thierry Herzog.

Wheels within wheels hardly begins to describe the depth and complexity of what has been uncovered. It is more like Russian dolls. Every time one case is opened, another appears, and another and another, until you begin to wonder how Sarkozy ever found time to decide on his policies, let alone govern the country.

Oh, and did I mention allegations that he may have been involved in behind-the-scenes negotiations leading up to the controversial decision to award the 2022 football World Cup to Qatar? Well, that’s another baseless insinuation. The President, together with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, then Crown Prince, now Emir of Qatar, and France’s Michel Platini, the second-most-powerful executive on the board of FIFA, the governing body of world football, may have had lunch in the Élysée shortly before the decision was taken, and Platini may since have been arrested, charged with taking a substantial bribe, but that has nothing to do with Sarkozy.

Nor did he take money from Gadaffi; he didn’t accept cash from Bettencourt; and he most certainly did not offer a top job in Monaco to Gilbert Azibert. It’s all fake news.

And perhaps it is. Politicians in France run a remorseless gauntlet of allegations that they are crooks, most of which ultimately fall by the wayside. Later this year, the trial is expected of François Fillon, the former prime minister, and his Welsh-born wife Penelope, on the charge that Madame Fillon was improperly paid €500,000 by her husband out of public funds for secretarial work that she never actually perfomed. Ten years ago, Fillon – ­once Sarkozy’s bitterest rival on the centre-right, subsequently trounced by both Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in the 2017 presidential race – was charged with withholding information that would have cleared Sarkozy of the charge that he had opened an illegal overseas bank account. After a lengthy trial, Fillon was exonerated, but Sarkozy never trusted him again. In Passions – already a bestseller, with reprints on the way – he looks back at the episode, reflecting that those who are innocent have nothing to fear from an investigation that brings everything into the open.

In respect of Azibert, the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, was clearly less than one hundred per cent convinced that Sarkozy has no case to answer. The judges, ruling purely on points of law, may or may not have been influenced by the fact that Sarkozy and his lawyer often talked on the phone using aliases (as one does). All that we can be sure of is that they saw no reason why the pair, plus Azibert, should not face trial, probably later this year.

We must assume that Sarkozy, whose has several times sought to have the case against him tossed out of court, will now insist on the same standard of legal scrutiny that he demanded in the case of François Fillon. Otherwise he would be exposed as a hypocrite, and that cannot possibly be true.

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