Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s legal troubles have finally caught up with his wife, Carla Bruni. The singer and former supermodel was charged on Tuesday for her alleged involvement in a far-fetched affair involving her husband.
The judges suspect that Bruni had a key role in the call Operation Save SarkozyThe aim was to obtain a key witness against Sarkozy who would exonerate the former president of having received Libyan money in the campaign that brought him to power in 2007.
Bruni is charged with “bribery of a witness” and “association of criminals with the aim of preparing a procedural fraud by an organised gang”, according to French media, citing judicial sources. While she is charged, she will not be able to meet any of the other people involved in the case, except her husband.
The former first lady, according to the judges, acted as an intermediary between her husband and public relations officer Mimi Marchand through a hidden telephone line while Marchand carried out the Operation Save SarkozyMarchand, head of a photo agency specialising in supplying images to the celebrity press, faces charges of having bribed, or attempted to bribe, the Franco-Lebanese Ziad Takieddine to withdraw his serious accusations against Sarkozy.
The events, which both Bruni and her husband deny, occurred at the end of 2020. Sarkozy, who has accumulated judicial convictions for corruption and other matters, had just been indicted for the alleged financing of his first presidential campaign by the regime of then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Takieddine, a shady intermediary based in Lebanon, claimed to have delivered five million euros from Libya to Sarkozy’s entourage. He made this statement to the judges.
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But the story took a turn that no one expected. Takieddine gave two interviews to the weekly from Beirut Paris Matchand BFM-TV. “I say it loud and clear,” he said. “There was no financing of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign.” “I always said that the truth would eventually triumph,” the former president said.
New twist in the script. A few months later, Takieddine changed his version again and accused the judges Paris Match of having “deformed” his statements. “Do not forget that Paris Match “It belongs to a friend of Sarkozy,” he told them. The owner at the time was the tycoon Arnaud Lagardère.
The new retraction by the Franco-Lebanese intermediary has left Sarkozy in a bad light. Details of the setup have come to light.
The person who had organized the interview with Takieddine in Beirut was Mimi Marchand, known in France as the queen of the paparazzi and also close to the Macron couple. According to the newspaper MediapartTakieddine was promised four million euros to retract, of which, according to The Worldwould end up receiving a few thousand.
The judges suspect that, in this operation to obtain the retraction of the Franco-Lebanese intermediary, Carla Bruni was in charge of coordinating the communication between her husband and Marchand. Using the hidden telephone line, Bruni asked Marchand while she was in Beirut to organize the interview with Takieddine: “Is everything okay, my Mimi?”
Sarkozy, who will be tried next year in the Libyan campaign financing case, has also been charged in the case with Takieddine. The World He claims that when his wife was questioned for the first time in May, she told investigators, apparently in an attempt to exonerate Sarkozy: “I am the only contact between Mimi Marchand and my husband… I am the one who should be charged.” And so it was.
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