France's President and UMP party candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy (Reuters / Philippe Wojazer)
Deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had agreed to fund French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign – to the tune of 50 million euro, a new report says.
The Paris-based investigative website Mediapart published “documentary evidence” that Gaddafi was ready to put forth tens of millions of dollars to see that Sarkozy won the French presidential race.
Mediapart claimed Saturday that the 2006 document was provided by "former senior [Libyan] officials, who are now in hiding." They further claim the document came “from the archives of the secret service,” and was signed by Gaddafi’s former intelligence chief and later foreign minister, Moussa Koussa.
In it, Koussa noted “an agreement in principle to support the campaign for the candidate for presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy, for a sum equivalent to 50 million euro."
Sarkozy denied similar allegations made this March, when the former doctor of a French arms dealer claimed to have set up the campaign donation.
Sarkozy attempted to shrewdly deflect the allegations when confronted by a TF1 presenter, saying, "If [Gaddafi] had financed it, I wasn't very grateful." Sarkozy’s sarcastic comeback was in reference to France’s lead role in the NATO campaign that led to Gaddafi’s brutal demise.
French politicians are banned from receiving campaign contributions from foreign states, and a French judge is currently looking into the allegations.
The document has surfaced at a particularly sensitive time for Sarkozy, who lost the first round of the French presidential vote and is currently trailing his Socialist rival Francois Hollande in the polls.
The second round of the presidential election is scheduled for May 6.
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