Nicholas Sarkozy on trial for corruption
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2025
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The former French president Nicholas Sarkozy has gone on trial today in Paris. He is accused of illegally taking funding from the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. Prosecutors allege the men struck a deal to fund Mr Sarkozy's ultimately successful campaign for the presidency in 2007. In return, they say he promised to help Colonel Gaddafi shed his pariah status on the world stage. The former French president denies the accusations.
Also in the programme: Hamas has released a list of 34 hostages that it says it is willing to release in the first stage of a potential ceasefire agreement with Israel. We speak to the daughter of one of those on the list; and the efforts to save the endangered Iberian Lynx in Portugal and Spain.
(Picture: Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrives on the first day of his trial. Credit: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. |
| 0:09.2 | I'm Tim Franks. And just to let you know about something that will be coming up, we imagine in about 40 minutes or so we're going to be hearing from Canada where the long-serving Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is about to hold a press conference. |
| 0:23.0 | There is a lot of, I think, what we can delicately call informed speculation that he is going to announce that he is stepping down. |
| 0:32.6 | We'll hear him speak and we'll be finding out why later in the program. |
| 0:39.0 | We're beginning, though, with a story which you might think on first hearing might not sound that stunning. |
| 0:45.1 | Former leader on trial over allegations of backhanders. |
| 0:49.1 | But this is a story on another scale and perhaps with big implications right now. The former leader |
| 0:56.4 | is Nicola Sarkozy, one-time president of France. The alleged slush fund, well, that was for |
| 1:02.9 | his victorious run to the Elysee Palace in 2007. And it came, so prosecutors say, from one of |
| 1:08.2 | the world's then most ostracized dictators, the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. |
| 1:18.7 | And that was the sound of the Presidential Guard in Paris, playing as Nicola Sokosi hosted Mr. Gaddafi at the Elysee in 2007 after he'd been elected president |
| 1:31.2 | and bringing Mr. Gaddafi very firmly in from the cold. |
| 1:35.4 | Well, the start of the trial today comes at the end of a mammoth ten-year investigation, |
| 1:39.3 | and as we'll hear in a moment, could have a major impact on the already filthy opinion |
| 1:43.6 | many in France have of their politics. For his part, Mr. Sarkozy says that... in a moment could have a major impact on the already filthy opinion. |
| 1:45.9 | Many in France have of their politics. |
| 1:49.3 | For his part, Mr. Sarkozy says that the accusations have been concocted by Libyans in revenge for his support |
| 1:54.3 | for the Western intervention that, in fact, in the end, |
| 1:57.1 | brought down President Gaddafi in 2011. |
| 2:00.9 | Christoph Angren is part of Nicola Sarkozy's legal team. |
| 2:05.4 | He has contested this accusation and it is grotesque. |
| 2:10.6 | We don't even know the amount of this alleged financing. |
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