Former Sarkozy Aide Charged in Fraud, as Inquiry into Illegal Campaign Funding Continues

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/world/europe/former-sarkozy-aide-charged-in-fraud-as-inquiry-into-illegal-campaign-funding-continues.html

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PARIS — An investigative judge filed preliminary charges over the weekend against a former interior minister and top aide to former President Nicolas Sarkozy in an inquiry into allegations of illegal funding of Mr. Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign by the Libyan government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

An official at the financial prosecutor’s office here, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the former minister, Claude Guéant, was detained, questioned and released late last week on preliminary charges of forgery and laundering proceeds from tax fraud.

In an interview with RTL radio on Monday, Mr. Guéant denied any wrongdoing. “Nothing in the case establishes proof of the offenses I am accused of,” he said. “I am an honest man and I will prove it.”

French investigative judges are looking into whether a transfer of 500,000 euros, about $543,000, into Mr. Guéant’s bank account was linked to possible illegal campaign funds from Libya. The allegations, denied by Mr. Sarkozy and his supporters, were first made in 2012, and prompted judges to open an investigation into corruption in 2013.

Mr. Guéant has always asserted that the transfer was payment for the sale in 2008 of two paintings by the 17th-century Dutch artist Andries van Eertvelt to a Malaysian lawyer.

Mr. Guéant’s lawyer, Philippe Bouchez El Ghozi, said that investigators questioned his client on the allegations of illegal campaign financing but found no link to the transfer.

“If they had, he would have been preliminarily charged with corruption or influence peddling, which isn’t the case,” Mr. Bouchez El Ghozi, a partner at the Paul Hastings law office in Paris, said in a telephone interview, noting that investigators had filed only the charges related to tax fraud, which his client also denies.

Mr. Guéant directed the national police force before becoming an aide to Mr. Sarkozy in 2002, when Mr. Sarkozy was the interior minister. After running Mr. Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign, Mr. Guéant became his presidential chief of staff and then interior minister.