Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was handed preliminary charges Wednesday over allegations he accepted millions of euros in illegal campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A judicial official told The Associated Press that investigating judges overseeing the probe gave the ex-president charges of illegally funding his successful 2007 campaign, passive corruption and receiving money from Libyan embezzlement.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

The charges involving illegal campaign funding from a foreign dictator are the most serious faced by a former French president in recent history. They were presented after Sarkozy was questioned for two days by anticorruption police at a station in Nanterre, northwest of the French capital.

Investigators are examining allegations that Gadhafi’s regime secretly gave Sarkozy 50 million euros (about $62 million) overall for his presidential election bid.

The sum would be more than double the legal campaign funding limit at the time — 21 million euros. In addition, the alleged payments would violate French rules against foreign financing and requiring that the source of campaign funds be declared.

Sarkozy, 63, who was France’s president during 2007-12, has repeatedly and vehemently denied any wrongdoing. According to the same source, he again proclaimed his innocence during his questioning by police.

The former president was released on Wednesday night, but placed under judicial supervision. Details of the restrictions he has been ordered to obey have not been revealed.

In the French judicial system, preliminary charges mean Sarkozy is personally under formal investigation in a criminal case. The judges will keep investigating the case in the next weeks and months.

At the end of their investigation, they can decide either to drop the preliminary charges or to send Sarkozy to trial on formal charges.

Sarkozy has faced other campaign-related legal troubles in the past. In February 2017, he was ordered to stand trial after being handed preliminary charges for suspected illegal overspending on his failed 2012 re-election campaign. Sarkozy has appealed the decision.

In 2013, he was cleared of allegations that he illegally took donations from France’s richest woman, L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, on the way to his 2007 election victory.

His lawyer, Thierry Herzog, did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Sarkozy’s former top aide, the ex-minister Brice Hortefeux, was also questioned Tuesday, but not detained. He said on Twitter that the details he gave investigators “should help put an end to a series of mistakes and lies.”

The investigation got a boost when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told the online investigative site Mediapart in 2016 that he delivered suitcases from Libya containing 5 million euros ($6.2 million) in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff, Claude Gueant.

Takieddine repeated his allegations during a live interview with France’s BFM TV on Wednesday night.

He claimed he personally handed a suitcase containing 2 million euros (about $2.5 million) in cash to Sarkozy at the then-candidate’s apartment and another suitcase with 1.5 million euros (about $1.9 million) to Sarkozy and a close aide at the French Interior Ministry. Sarkozy was interior minister at the time.

Takieddine alleged he gave a third suitcase with 1.5 million euros in cash to the aide alone. He said the money was not meant to finance Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007, but to honor contracts between France and Libya.

“He’s a real liar,” Takieddine said of Sarkozy.

(Source: AP)

Judges in France placed former French president Nicolas Sarkozy under formal investigation on Wednesday over allegations of illegal campaign financing, a judicial source said. Sarkozy was released from under judicial supervision after two days of questioning over allegations that his 2007 election campaign received funding from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the source said.

He is being investigated for illicit campaign financing, misappropriation of Libyan public funds and passive corruption, the source said confirming a report in Le Monde newspaper. It is the second major investigation for Sarkozy, who is also facing charges of illicit campaign spending overruns during his failed re-election bid in 2012.

The current questioning relates to accusations made by a Franco-Lebanese businessman, Ziad Takieddine, who says he helped funnel 5 million euros ($6 million) from Gaddafi’s intelligence chief to Sarkozy’s campaign chief ahead of the 2007 election.

Gaddafi’s son, Saif Al Islam told Africanews on Tuesday that he is willing to testify and offer evidence against Sarkozy relating to the campaign financing of the 2007 campaign.

Neither Sarkozy nor his lead lawyer have commented publicly since the 63-year-old first answered the police summons on Tuesday. Sarkozy has in the past dismissed the allegations as “grotesque” and described them as a “manipulation”.

The inquiry began in 2013, after investigative website Mediapart published Takieddine’s allegations.

In an interview with Lebanon’s L’Orient du Jour newspaper published on Tuesday, Takieddine said he acted as an intermediary between France and Libya during the time that Sarkozy served as interior minister, before his election bid.

Five months after Sarkozy was elected president, Gaddafi visited him in Paris. It was the eccentric Libyan leader’s first state visit to a Western capital in decades, and he pitched a Bedouin-style tent near the Elysee Palace.

Later, Sarkozy became one of the chief advocates of the NATO-led campaign against Gaddafi that resulted in the dictator’s overthrow and killing by rebels in 2011.

In France, investigators can interrogate people for up to 48 hours, after which they must release them or notify them that they are being put under formal investigation, which signals serious suspicion but does not automatically lead to trial.

It was not immediately clear when Sarkozy might know his fate, given that his questioners are free to stop the clock for breaks, sleep or longer timeouts between question-and-answer sessions before their 48-hour limit is up.

Sarkozy, once branded a “bling-bling” president, has been dogged for years by political scandals, but none has led to a conviction.

He is not the first French president to be questioned by police after leaving office.

His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was convicted in 2011, after his retirement, of misusing public funds to keep allies in phantom jobs. He was the first French head of state to be convicted of a crime since Nazi collaborator Marshall Philippe Petain in 1945.

Source: Africa News

Nigeria’s homegrown Boko Haram Takfiri terror group has surprisingly returned more than a 100 of 110 girls it had abducted from the country’s northeast last month, but has served the parents with a stern warning.

The terrorists rolled into the town of Dapchi on Wednesday, dropping some of the abductees they had spirited away from the Government Science and Technical College there, the Associated Press reported.

Freed girls and relatives said one schoolgirl was still in captivity, while five had died.

“We did it out of pity. And don’t ever put your daughters in school again,” the extremists told the residents.

“This is a warning to you all,” resident Ba’ana Musa cited them as saying.

Bashir Manzo, whose 16-year-old daughter had been freed, said, “As I speak to you there is jubilation in Dapchi.”

The group kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok, similarly located in the northeast, in 2014. The mass kidnapping triggered global condemnation and intense criticism of Nigerian officials in the country as well as an international “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign.

Nearly 60 of the abductees escaped soon after the incident and others have since been released after mediation. Some 100, however, are believed to remain in captivity.

Since 2009, Boko Haram militancy has left at least 20,000 dead and made over 2.6 million others homeless. The group pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh group in 2015.

Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates as “Western education is forbidden,” has used kidnapping as a weapon of war, seizing thousands of women and young girls as well as men and young boys.

Source: Presstv

The number of Anglophone Cameroonians seeking asylum in Nigeria has doubled since mid-January. Without urgent international support, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, warns that their struggle for survival will be increasingly desperate.

Anglophone Cameroonians began fleeing violence in October 2017 and continue to pour into Nigeria’s Cross River, Taraba, Benue and Akwa-Ibom states. In total, over 20,000 refugees have been registered in the area. Women and children account for four-fifths of the population.

A recent assessment by humanitarian groups shows how grim the situation has become. Ninety-five per cent of the asylum seekers have no more than three days of food. Most families are down to one meal per day. The coping strategies people are using are themselves risky, and range from borrowing money to cutting food portions or saving food only for children.

Most asylum seekers say they are having to drink water from streams, ponds and other unsafe sources, because of inadequate or dysfunctional drinking water facilities. Essential relief items, such as clothing, blankets and plastic sheeting, are available to fewer than 25 per cent of them.

Only five in every 100 Cameroonians have proper or independent shelter. The rest have little or no privacy, squatting in rooms hosting on average 10 to 15 people. Protection from the cold is lacking, increasing health concerns due to the imminent start of the rainy season.

Malaria is reportedly already on the increase. Children commonly exhibit rapid breathing and coughing. Many participants at the assessment were suffering from fear and anxiety, poor sleep and flashbacks. In all, about 20 to 30 per cent of the asylum seekers have some kind of vulnerability, such as a physical disability.

Three quarters of the Cameroonian children who recently fled to Nigeria currently cannot access school, because their families cannot afford to pay for books and uniforms. Adults are also becoming more frustrated as they struggle to make ends meet.

A political solution to the situation in Cameroon is urgently needed, so that the Cameroonians can safely and voluntarily return home. Until then, UNHCR and its partners will continue their efforts to provide assistance and support to this population as long as we are able.

Our office has worked on a contingency plan of US$18 million to help cover their needs. However, so far no funds have been received, leading to immense challenges and gaps in the response.

Earlier this month, the authorities in Nigeria allocated land to UNHCR which should allow for shelters to be established to ensure the safety, security and self-reliance of refugees. UNHCR acknowledges the authorities’ commitment to assist in moving the refugees at least 50 kilometres away from the border, in line with humanitarian principles.

We also remain concerned about reports of further arrests of Cameroonian nationals in Nigeria, including at least one asylum seeker at the beginning of March. UNHCR urges the Nigerian authorities to refrain from the forcible return of individuals who may have fled persecution in their country of origin, and to respect the principle of non-refoulement or no forced returns.

Source: UNHCR.Org