Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s mobile phone has been under a wiretap for nearly a year as part of an investigation into campaign financing that has triggered a separate probe for influence peddling, Le Monde newspaper reported yesterday.
Le Monde said Sarkozy and two of his former interior ministers were placed under wiretap in April 2013 as part of the investigation into allegations his 2007 presidential campaign was partly financed by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
According to Le Monde, the recordings revealed that a top prosecutor was using his access to confidential court documents to brief Sarkozy on another affair in which he was implicated – the Bettencourt affair.
Sarkozy was charged last year with exploiting elderly L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt in order to obtain contributions towards his 2007 election campaign.
The charges were later dropped but Sarkozy is still trying to contain the fallout by contesting the legality of the seizure of his presidential-era diaries.
The diaries are believed to contain entries that could prove Sarkozy’s close links with a businessman Bernard Tapie who is charged with fraud over a colossal payout he received from the state when Sarkozy was leader.
Le Monde said the wiretaps showed that a public prosecutor who was not involved in the Bettencourt case but who has access to judicial documents secretly briefed Sarkozy’s lawyer on which way the Court of Cassation was leaning on the matter of the diaries.
The newspaper also reported that prosecutor Gilbert Azibert had asked in return for a plug from Sarkozy for a cushy post in Monaco.
Investigators are now looking at whether Sarkozy did try to obtain a position for the prosecutor, the report said.
Sarkozy’s lawyer told Le Monde the allegations were “absurd”.
The affair, which was being billed by the ruling Socialist Party as an “affaire d’etat” (matter of state), is one of several hanging over Sarkozy as he contemplates a political comeback in 2017 elections.
Besides the campaign financing probe and the Tapie investigation he could also face questions over the awarding of lucrative government contracts to one of his former closest advisers, Patrick Buisson.
On Wednesday, two websites revealed that Buisson secretly taped conversations with Sarkozy when he was still president.