PARIS, May 14, 2013 (AFP)
Former French minister Claude Gueant, who is being probed in an alleged illegal campaign funds scandal involving ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, received 25,000 euros from a source in Jordan, a source close to the investigation said Tuesday, cited by AFP.
Gueant, a Sarkozy aide who served as interior minister, is under investigation over allegations that the former president received money from Libya’s ex-dictator Moamer Kadhafi for his winning 2007 campaign.
Gueant refused comment when contacted by AFP. The source said the 25,000 euros ($32,000) had been found in his account and that it had come from Jordan.
There have been regular raids on the homes and business premises of Gueant and Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine as well as lawyer Robert Bourgi over the affair. Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing.
French investigators have honed in on a 500,000 euro payment to Gueant, uncovered during a raid on February 27.
Gueant has said the money came from the sale of two paintings by 18th century Flemish artist Andries van Eertvelt to a Malaysian lawyer. But experts say the works are not worth that amount.
The allegations of Libyan financing for Sarkozy’s campaign surfaced in French media last year in the last days of his losing re-election bid against Socialist Francois Hollande, who is now France’s president. The investigative website Mediapart reported last April that Kadhafi’s regime had contributed 50 million euros ($65.5 million) to Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.
Takieddine, who is embroiled in a series of political financing scandals, has also repeatedly claimed that he has proof Sarkozy was financed by the Libyans but has refused to make his evidence public.
Kadhafi’s regime was toppled and he himself was killed in 2011 following an uprising backed by a NATO intervention that Sarkozy was instrumental in organising.
That won Sarkozy international acclaim but his reputation has been blighted since leaving office last year by a slew of judicial probes into his conduct during his time as president or as a government minister.
