Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is facing up to 10 years in prison over claims that he took campaign money from deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
The controversy has dogged Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, for more than a decade but did not reach a courtroom until this week. The trial is expected to continue until April 10.
Prosecutors claim that Sarkozy accepted millions in euros to support his 2007 presidential campaign, in exchange for helping the internationally isolated Gaddafi, who ruled Libya with an iron fist for decades before his violent overthrow in 2011.
Shortly after becoming president, Sarkozy had welcomed Gaddafi to the Elysee Palace in Paris.
The investigation into Sarkozy's Libya ties was opened in 2013, two years after Gaddafi was deposed and killed by militants in the country's civil war.
Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam, claimed Libya had funded Sarkozy and angrily demanded repayment after France became the first Western nation to intervene against the Gaddafi regime.
"Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. We funded it and we have all the details and are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given assistance so that he could help them. But he’s disappointed us: give us back our money," he told Euronews at the time.
Eleven others are accused in the case, including a French Lebanese businessman who said he delivered suitcases full of money to Sarkozy, only to retract the claim years later. The reversal led to charges of witness tampering against Sarkozy and his wife, former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
One of those accused in the Libya plot, Gaddafi's former oil minister, was mysteriously found dead in the Danube River in Vienna in 2012; his notebook allegedly contained evidence of payments to Sarkozy.
Sarkozy has faced other legal troubles. He was sentenced in December to a year in house arrest with electronic monitoring for bribing a judge, and he was separately found guilty of illegal campaign spending when he ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2012.
In the Libya case, Sarkozy is facing up to 10 years in prison and 375,000 euros ($386,000) in fines. Sarkozy has always rejected the case as a political fabrication.
"After 10 years of investigation, with an unprecedented deployment of resources, wiretaps, judges traveling abroad, all over the world, there is – obviously – no trace of financing, no transfer, no payment, not even an amount for the alleged financing," lawyer Christophe Ingrain said.
