Sarkozy denies allegations of Gaddafi donation.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has dismissed as “grotesque” allegations that emerged on Monday that the regime of former Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi had given €50m to his election campaign in 2007.

A French investigative website, Mediapart, reproduced extracts from a document which it said suggested the sum had been paid following a visit to Libya by Mr Sarkozy in October 2005 when he was interior minister.

There was no confirmation of the authenticity of the highly cryptic document, which was dated December 2006, or its contents. But its publication just weeks before the first round of the presidential election on April 22 was seized upon by the campaign of François Hollande, the opposition Socialist party candidate.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hollande issued a statement saying the information “cannot rest without a response”. Mr Sarkozy “must explain the nature of his past relations with Col Gaddafi,” she said.
The allegations followed an earlier claim made on television last March by Seif al-Islam, one of Col Gaddafi’s sons, shortly after France took the lead in the Nato military action that helped topple the dictator, that the regime had financed Mr Sarkozy’s campaign.
Asked about the allegations on French television on Monday night, Mr Sarkozy said: “It is grotesque.”
Referring to his role in unseating Col Gaddafi, he said: “If he financed [the campaign] I have not been very grateful.”
He added: “Mr Gaddafi, who is known for saying anything, even said that there were cheques. Well then the son should just go ahead and produce them.”
Mediapart said the document it had seen was a note made of evidence from the doctor of Ziad Takieddine, a businessman with links to the French and Libyan governments, who helped arrange Mr Sarkozy’s 2005 visit to Libya. Mr Takieddine has denied the allegations.
Mr Takieddine said: “There was not one bit of any finance from Libya to France or from Gadaffi to Sarkozy. Nothing.”
The extracts reproduced by Mediapart only referred to individuals by their initials and were in note form. The document was part of evidence being collected for an investigation into the so-called Karachi affair involving alleged kickbacks from a French arms deal with Pakistan in the 1990s in which a number of the same individuals have been implicated.
Mediapart, which launched in 2008, was co-founded by Edwy Plenel, one of France’s most famous investigative reporters and a veteran Le Monde journalist.