France’s ex-first lady supermodel Carla Bruni quizzed in corruption case after hubby Sarkozy took millions from Gaddafi
FORMER French first lady Carla Bruni is being questioned by police as a criminal suspect in a wide-ranging corruption case.
The supermodel is said to have tried to ‘whitewash’ her husband, former President Nicolas Sarkozy, over allegations that he accepted millions in cash from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Bruni, who denies any wrongdoing today attended the Paris offices of the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses.
A source close to the case: "Her status is free suspect.
"She has spoken to officers before, but not as a suspect in a case in which she’s accused of trying to whitewash her husband."
Bruni, 56, is a close friend of Mimi Marchand – a French media fixer who has been placed under formal investigation for "‘"witness tampering" and "criminal corruption".
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Marchand, 77 and nicknamed ‘The Paparazzi Queen’, is accused of paying former French-Lebanese arms dealer Ziad Takieddine, 74, to drop a sworn testament that he arranged for millions of dollars from Colonel Gaddafi to be paid to Sarkozy.
During an interview which was published in Paris Match magazine four years ago, Takieddine withdraw his claim that suitcases stuffed with cash had been delivered to Sarkozy’s colleagues.
The money was used to fund the 2007 election campaign that saw Sarkozy win his one and only term in office as President of France, it was alleged.
Sarkozy, 69, used the 2020 interview to falsely claim that he had been cleared because "the truth is out".
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But Marchand – who also denies any wrongdoing – is said by prosecutors to have offered Takieddine inducements to change his story.
The case involving Bruni is dubbed ‘Operation Save Sarko’, and is running in tandem with the Libyan funding case, in which Sarkozy has already been indicted.
Takieddine, who is currently in Lebanon, is said to have received the equivalent of up to £4million to "change his story", according to prosecution claims.
Bruni has continually denied any involvement in ‘Operation Save Sarko,’ saying she tries to avoid legal cases involving her husband, who is already a twice-convicted criminal.
She said: "When people talk to me about it, it puts me in a situation of anger and indignation which does not help my husband.
"I don’t have the beginnings of the slightest curiosity about my husband’s affairs.";
But detectives say Bruni deleted all of the messages she had exchanged with Marchand on the encrypted Signal app, before Marchand’s indictment in June 2021.
It has also emerged that when Marchand travelled to Beirut to see Takieddine in October 2020, at the height of the worldwide Covid crisis, Bruni helped ‘fix’ a positive medical test for her.
An investigating source said: "It is alleged that this would help Marchand in the Save Sarko operation."
One of Bruni’s security guards sent her a text at the time, saying: "Madame, this is a matter settled for Tuesday morning, 48 hours before their departure for Lebanon."
According to the Mediapart investigative news site, Sarkozy himself told detectives as recently as October: "My wife helps Ms. Marchand as she does her friend a favor so that she can go on a trip.
Sarkozy continued: "You ask me if Carla Bruni knew about the trip to Lebanon? Yes, I can't dispute it, but was she aware that Mr. Takieddine was sentenced to prison? No. Did she know he had run away, or was in Beirut? No."
The flamboyant Takieddine is – like Marchand – somebody who has numerous celebrity contacts, and has even claimed to be Amal Clooney’s uncle.
During dealing with French courts in April 2014, Takieddine asked for a supervision order to be lifted so that he could attend a London party in honour of the marriage of his "niece", then called Amal Alamuddin, to American actor George Clooney.
Takieddine has cited his family relationship with Amal Clooney – who was born in Beirit – on a number of occasions since, although Ms Clooney has not confirmed it.
Sarkozy has been charged with corruption, "illicit funding of an election campaign", "receiving misappropriated public funds", and "criminal conspiracy" in relation to the Gaddafi scandal.
He is due to go on trial next year.
Three of his former ministers – Brice Hortefeux, Claude Guéant and Éric Woerth – are also under investigation.
In January, Sarkozy today failed to overturn a criminal conviction and prison sentence for illegally funding his campaign for re-election.
His lawyers had asked the Paris Appeal Court to revoke one-year in jail, with six months suspended, but judges ruled no.
It followed a five-week trial at the city’s Correctional Court three years ago, when Sarkozy was found guilty of fiddling the books during his unsuccessful 2012 bid to become head of state.
Sarkozy, who was President of France for five years up until 2012, served his sentence wearing an electronic tag at the Paris home he shares with Bruni.
In March 2021, Sarkozy was also convicted of corruption and influence peddling and sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended.
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Sarkozy's conservative predecessor as President of France, the late Jacques Chirac, received a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for corruption, but this related to his time as Mayor of Paris.
The last French head of state to go to a prison cell was Marshall Philippe Pétain, the wartime Nazi collaborator.