French Judges Drop Investigation Into Charges Against Sarkozy By SCOTT SAYARE PARIS — French magistrates said Monday they were dropping an investigation into charges that former President Nicolas Sarkozy had manipulated a fragile heiress into financing his 2007 campaign, removing a potential obstacle to the political return that Mr. Sarkozy is widely assumed to be planning. In March, the investigative judges in the southwestern city of Bordeaux placed Mr. Sarkozy under formal investigation in the so-called Bettencourt Affair, a tangle of allegations of embezzlement and financial malfeasance among people connected to Liliane Bettencourt, 90, the heiress to the L’Oréal fortune and France’s wealthiest woman. The magistrates suspected that Mr. Sarkozy had taken advantage of Ms. Bettencourt’s mental “frailty,” extracting campaign pledges from her in personal meetings shortly before his 2007 election. Ms. Bettencourt had been declared to be in a state of dementia in 2006. The announcement of the investigation of Mr. Sarkozy, who last year lost the presidency to the Socialist François Hollande, and with it judicial immunity, touched off a political furor among his rightist allies. They called the charges preposterous, and lawyers for Mr. Sarkozy sought to have them invalidated. In a message posted on his official Facebook page on Monday evening, Mr. Sarkozy proclaimed that he had been declared “innocent,” and listed the numerous hardships to which he had been subjected by investigators, including 22 hours of questioning. “So, this was the price to pay so that the truth could finally be established,” he wrote, adding a warning to the politicians “who during these long months made use of this ‘affair’ and cultivated doubt” about his probity. “One never wins in slandering,” he continued. “All one does is debase democracy.” Mr. Sarkozy’s allies have sought to undermine the credibility of the investigating judges by suggesting that they had political motives. Though he left office pledging he would never return to politics, and has all but refrained from media appearances since then, Mr. Sarkozy remains a constant presence here. His friends and favored political operatives have for months fueled speculation of a return for the 2017 presidential election, dropping hints while allowing him to remain above the political fray and internecine fighting that has consumed the French right since his defeat. His legal worries may not be over, however. His former budget minister, Éric Woerth, who served as his campaign treasurer in 2007, remains under investigation in the Bettencourt case. Judges are also investigating Claude Guéant, a close aide to Mr. Sarkozy before and during his presidency, in two separate cases — one involving allegations that Mr. Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign had received illegal financing from the government of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who died in 2011. In yet another case, a judge is investigating the possible misuse of public funds by Mr. Sarkozy’s presidential office, which signed contracts with a number of private polling agencies without a competitive bidding process and appeared to pay excessive sums, sometimes for polls that appeared to have only his electoral considerations at heart.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 04:21:39 +0000