Nicolas Sarkozy likely to be tried for corrupt practices?

By Dilip -
..Sarkozy could also become a focus of a separate investigation into whether there was a shady "cabinet noir" at the highest reaches of the French state that used the secret services to spy on journalists at Le Monde to uncover their sources for stories about the Bettencourt affair. A security chief and Sarkozy ally has been placed under investigation. Sarkozy has denied outright any links to the scandal but has never given his version of events to judges. Magistrates working on the cases have so far kept silent over whether they would call him to testify.

In another case, known as the Karachi affair, potentially the most damaging political corruption inquiry in recent French history, judges are investigating allegations that kickbacks from French arms sales to Pakistan in the early 1990s secretly funded the failed presidential campaign of Sarkozy's mentor Edouard Balladur. Sarkozy was his campaign spokesman. Sarkozy's office has said he had nothing to do with the case. The families of 11 French engineers killed in a bomb attack in Pakistan in 2002 that is believed to have been linked to the case are calling for answers.

The latest case involves the investigative news website Mediapart, which last month published a document it said showed that the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had agreed to fund Sarkozy's 2007 campaign. Sarkozy sued Mediapart, calling the document an "obvious fake", and Libya's National Transitional Council has also cast doubt on it. A judicial investigation has been opened to ascertain its veracity.

Last year, in a humiliating post-script to one of the longest political careers in Europe, Jacques Chirac was convicted of corruption when a court found him guilty of misusing public funds for political purposes while he was mayor of Paris. He was accused of siphoning off state funds for party work that ensured his election as president in 1995. He was the first postwar French president to be convicted of a crime...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/11/nicolas-sarkozy-leave-office-immunity

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