The former director of “Paris Match” and of the “Journal du Dimanche”, Hervé Gattegno, is heard this Tuesday by investigators on Ziad Takieddine’s retraction on suspicion of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign, according to franceinfo information.
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After Ziad Takieddine’s retraction on the suspicion of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign in 2007, the former director of Paris Match and Sunday Newspaper, Hervé Gattegno, was heard on Tuesday December 14 by the investigators, learned franceinfo from a source close to the case.
More precisely, Hervé Gattegno is questioned by the investigators from the Anti-Corruption Office (OCLCIFF) in the context of a judicial investigation opened in May, on the conditions for organizing an interview granted by Ziad Takieddine to Paris Match and BFMTV, in November 2020 in Beirut . In this interview, the Franco-Lebanese businessman cleared Nicolas Sakozy in the Libyan financing file.
Still on this retraction of Ziad Takieddine, thea director of the Bestimage agency, Michèle Marchand, as well as a journalist from Paris Match had been placed in police custody by the central management of OCLCIFF in June, as part of an open judicial investigation for “witness tampering” and “criminal association with a view to committing an organized gang fraud”.
Hervé Gattegno was then ousted in mid-October from the head of Paris Match and JDD by the Lagardère group. After the opening of the judicial inquiry into the conditions of publication of the interview, the society of journalists (SDJ) of Paris Match and journalists’ unions had mentioned in a text at the end of June the “deep unease” reigning within the editorial staff of the weekly about this affair, the treatment of which is, according to them, harmful for “credibility” of their title.
It was in 2012 that Mediapart revealed the case of suspicion of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign, by publishing documents which suggested that the former head of state had received funding to the tune of 50 million euros from from the former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In November 2016, the Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine thus affirmed to Mediapart to have “handed over three suitcases of Libyan money” to Nicolas Sarkozy and his right arm Claude Guéant.