"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Nicholas Sarkozy charged with accepting money from Gaddafi

France's former president has been put under investigation and charged with taking money from Libya's former autocrat for the French election campaign, exceeding the limit usually allowed:
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was handed preliminary charges Wednesday over allegations he accepted millions of euros in illegal campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A judicial official told The Associated Press that investigative judges overseeing the probe gave the ex-president charges of illegally funding his 2007 winning campaign, passive corruption and receiving money from Libyan embezzlement.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

The charges came after Sarkozy was questioned for two days by anticorruption police at a station in Nanterre, northwest of the French capital. The investigation involving funding for his 2007 president campaign. Investigators are examining allegations that Gadhafi’s regime secretly gave the politician 50 million euros overall for his campaign.

The sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time — 21 million euros. In addition, the alleged payments would violate French rules against foreign financing and requiring that the source of campaign funds be declared.
If this is so, it somehow doesn't surprise me he'd take money from a tyrant. Sarkozy did nothing to stop Islam when he was president, allowed jihadism to fester, demanded Israel surrender territory to the PLO, and even gave an award to anti-Israeli journalist Charles Enderlin, which I'm sure was no accident. He was even photographed putting his hand on a woman's breast, which is inappropriate behavior for a head of state. If Sarkozy ran for office today in the post-Harvey Weinstein era, the chances are much higher that could be used against him, and make him a far less appealing candidate than before.

The least Sarkozy could do now is apologize for the hugest errors he made in his one term, but all the same, I think his political career at this point is over, and his associations with Gaddafi were wrong too. Naturally, if he played any part in Gaddafi's overthrow without ensuring there'd be a suitable replacement and democracy/sanity could reign in Libya, then that's another grave mistake he made. So, in retrospect, nobody needs to feel too sorry to see Sarkozy get charged with felonies.

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