Former French President Sarkozy is to appear in court over claims he accepted £42 million from Colonel Gaddafi to finance the election campaign in case he could be jailed for 10 years

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy faced a prison sentence of up to 10 years when he appeared in court today accused of concluding a “corruption pact” with the late Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.

Sarkozy, 69, was noticeably tanned as he took his seat at a Parisian port on Monday afternoon, having just returned from a holiday in the Seychelles with his third wife, Carla Bruni, the 57-year-old former supermodel.

She was not in court despite being charged herself in connection with the case.

Prosecutors alleged that Sarkozy accepted around £42 million from Gaddafi to finance his successful 2007 election campaign.

In return, Sarkozy promised to restore oil-rich Libya’s image after the country was blamed for terrorist atrocities such as the Lockerbie bombing and the shooting death of a female police officer in London.

Jean-François Bohnert, head of the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), outlined details of “one of the most serious cases the Republic has ever known.”

Mr Bohnert said a decade-long investigation led to Mr Sarkozy appearing before the 32nd chamber of the Paris Criminal Court.

“The corruption pact was intended to improve relations with Libya,” Bohnert said.

He insisted that the prosecution ‘was not of a political nature’ and that Sarkozy had ‘not been found guilty in advance’.

Wearing a black tie, white shirt and blue suit, Sarkozy paused to shake hands with uniformed police officers guarding the court.

He stood trial with 12 other defendants, at least two of whom have been on the run since the publication of a 577-page summary report last year.

The charges, all of which are denied, are: ‘Corruption, receiving stolen public funds, illegal campaign financing and criminal association’.

Sarkozy was finally convicted last month of bribing a judge in a separate case, meaning he was likely wearing an electronic tag under his pants on his right ankle.

The PNF claims that Sarkozy first requested funding during a visit to Libya when he was France’s interior minister in 2005.

This led to the ‘corruption pact’ between the politician and Gaddafi, which saw suitcases full of cash delivered by middlemen, it is claimed.

The Gaddafi money is said to have been laundered through bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland.

Within months of his election in 2007, Sarkozy invited Gaddafi to a state visit to Paris, praising him as a good friend and “brother leader.”

This was when Libya was still seen as a pariah state for the downing of PanAm Flight 103, with the loss of 270 lives, over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 2008.

The murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London four years earlier also still caused outrage, largely because no one was ever brought to justice for it.

Gaffafi’s military security chief and brother-in-law, Abdallah Senoussi, was also found guilty in absentia of an attack on a French DC-10 plane that killed 170.

The funding case was supported by the investigative news site Mediapart, which in 2012 published a document signed by the head of Libya’s intelligence service apparently showing that the equivalent of £42 million had been paid to Sarkozy.

Sarkozy insisted the contract was fake, but it was later ruled that it could be used as evidence.

The former head of state’s former ministers, Claude Gueant and Eric Woerth, have also been charged in connection with the allegations and are in the dock.

It was in 2011 that fighter jets from the RAF and French Air Force led the massive bombing campaign, which ended with Gaddafi being hacked to death by a mob.

David Cameron was the British Prime Minister at the time and visited Libya together with Sarkozy.

There are claims that Sarkozy wanted his old friend and ally dead because of his potential to produce incriminating evidence.

Sarkozy is already the first ex-president of France to be tried for alleged crimes during his time in office.

Within days of Sarkozy losing his presidential immunity from prosecution in 2012, fraud squad investigators raided the Paris home he shares with his third wife, former supermodel Carla Bruni.

In 2021, Sarkozy was found guilty of illegally financing his re-election campaign and jailed.

The verdict by the Paris criminal court followed a five-week trial in which prosecutors said the politician was guilty of tampering with the books during his failed 2012 bid to become head of state.

It followed Sarkozy’s previous three-year prison sentence for bribing a judge – a conviction that was upheld on appeal last month, when Sarkozy was told he could serve his prison sentence while wearing an electronic tag.

Carla Bruni is accused of being part of a £4million campaign called ‘Operation Save Sarko’ – a complex and illegal scheme to keep her husband out of jail.

She has been charged with a range of corruption offences, including ‘witness tampering in an organized gang’, and could face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty in a separate trial. Like her husband, Mrs. Bruni denies any wrongdoing.

Sarkozy’s conservative predecessor as president of France, the late Jacques Chirac, was given a two-year suspended sentence for corruption in 2011, but this was related to his time as mayor of Paris.

The last French head of state to go to a prison cell was Marshal Philippe Pétain, the wartime Nazi collaborator.

The Gaddafi trial will last three months and is likely to end in early April.