The Sarkozy affair

**Tristan Redman** (0:00)
You're listening to The Documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Tristan Redman, and this is the Sarkozy affair. Throughout this case, France's former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has denied any wrongdoing.
It's 2005, and we're in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. A French minister is on an official visit.

**Fabrice Arfi** (0:29)
There was a dinner, an evening event, at the French embassy.

**Tristan Redman** (0:32)
At the dinner, there are 80 guests. There are toasts.
This is Libya in the final phase of Muammar Gaddafi's rule. Colonel Gaddafi, the dictator, doesn't know it yet, But within a few years, he'll be deposed and then murdered by a mob. But for now, in our story, he's still in charge.

**Fabrice Arfi** (0:56)
And then some Libyan officials turned up, and they said, there's someone we need you to meet.

**Tristan Redman** (1:03)
This is Fabrice Arfi, an investigative journalist with the website Mediapart, who's telling us the story. He says the officials accompany the minister outside to a waiting car. The minister gets in. Later, he'll say he doesn't know at first where the car's taking him or who he's heading to meet. There's no ambassador, nor any diplomats with him. At the embassy, they don't know he's leaving.
The scene the minister describes, Fabrice says, is practically a kidnapping.
The car arrives at its destination, a villa. The house belongs to a man that the minister shouldn't be meeting, a man who's been convicted in France of terrorism. He is wanted by Interpol. Now, if I told you that after this unexpected meeting, the minister doesn't mention to his boss what's just happened to him, well, you might think it was unusual. Then if I told you that in the final months of that same year, 2005, a scene like this didn't just happen once, it happened twice. Two separate high-ranking French government officials in surprise unplanned meetings in Tripoli with the exact same man, a man convicted of terrorism. Well, then you might wonder what was going on. And you wouldn't be alone. Because 20 years later, prosecutors say that these two meetings were the moments a secret pact was forged, a pact between the Libyan government and the entourage of a French presidential hopeful. The individuals involved all say that no such pact ever existed and that they were tricked into these meetings. But the story of these visits to Tripoli and what happened inside those meetings has engulfed part of the French political establishment for two decades. These are alleged to be the central moments of a scandal that goes to the very summit of the French state, all the way to the one-time president of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Bonjour, mesdames. Je suis Tristan Redman de la BBC. I'm at the grand old courthouse in central Paris.
The former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is about to arrive, to appeal his conviction for criminal conspiracy. In 2025, he was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in an alleged plot to illegally finance his 2007 presidential election campaign. Sarkozy was acquitted of three other charges and he still denies any wrongdoing. Now he's back in court, hoping to clear his name entirely.

**Saif al-Islam Gaddafi** (4:14)
OK, how are you? Good. Yeah, good, thanks, good.

**Tristan Redman** (4:17)
I'm just at the Palais de Justy now. Sarko, I'm hoping, will arrive half past midday or something like that. Sarko, as he's known by almost everyone in France, can still pull a crowd. There are members of the public queuing to get into the court. They want to see the man who was once hailed as the saviour of France.
The centre-right politician was elected in 2007 on a mandate to drag the country into the 21st century. To celebrate his victory that night, there was a glittering party on the Champs-Elysées, the most famous figures in France were there, including Sarkozy's friend, the rock star, Johnny Halliday.
Sarkozy is a man of honour, Johnny says. He is a man who loves his family and his friends. A man, he says, who could never betray his country. And yet, almost 20 years later, Sarkozy is accused of doing precisely that.
This is a tale of secret meetings, claims of suitcases of banknotes, witnesses who disappear in mysterious circumstances, and so much cash that the protagonists don't even know what to do with it. They even consider destroying it. Above all, this is a story about where the money came from. French judges and journalists have been trying to solve that puzzle for years. And Nicolas Sarkozy? He says there's zero proof he's ever received any of it or done anything wrong. But the stakes for him are huge. If he doesn't win his appeal, he could spend ten years behind bars.