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The Documentary Podcast

The Sarkozy affair

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.32.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The story of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise and fall has been gripping France. There are allegations of a secret pact with a dictator and unexplained meetings between figures close to government and a known terrorist. And so much cash that party workers do not know what to do with it. The former French President was jailed last year for conspiring to fund his 2007 election campaign with money from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He is currently appealing his sentence - and he has some powerful supporters. Tristan Redman tells the story of how he became the first former French head of state to end up behind bars since Nazi collaborator, Philippe Pétain. Featuring investigative journalist, Fabrice Arfi from Mediapart; Daniele Klein whose brother was killed in the ‘French Lockerbie’ and her niece Melanie who lost her father; Alain Minc, one of Nicolas Sarkozy’s closest friends and advisers; the British writer and academic Andrew Hussey and Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, who was Sarkozy’s finance minister.

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.

0:07.2

Things just swirling around my head.

0:09.6

Am I really the product of this?

0:12.1

Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests.

0:17.0

Little did I know what more was to come.

0:19.5

I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, we'll hear more stories emerging

0:25.2

out of the ever-expanding global DNA database.

0:28.8

They did know that I was different.

0:31.7

You had kids together.

0:33.0

Yeah.

0:33.5

Then you met.

0:34.3

Then we met.

0:35.2

The Gift.

0:36.1

Listen on BBC Sounds.

0:39.1

You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

0:43.3

I'm Tristan Redmond, and this is the Sarkozy affair.

0:47.0

Throughout this case, Francis' former President Nicholas Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing.

0:56.8

It's 2005 and we're in Tripoli, the capital of Libya.

1:02.2

A French minister is on an official visit.

1:08.7

There was a dinner, an evening event, at the French embassy.

1:12.2

At the dinner, there are 80 guests. There are toasts.

1:16.3

This is Libya in the final phase of Moama Gaddafi's rule.

...

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