Paris - French President Nicolas Sarkozy is suing the former
head of France's domestic spy service RG for slander, French media
reported on Friday.
In the lawsuit Sarkozy's attorney, Thierry Herzog, charged that RG
head Yves Bertrand allowed 'others to receive information related to
(Sarkozy's) private life, thereby causing him injury, ... and
fraudulently distorted the truth with an irrefutable wish to harm.'
The complaint concerns excerpts from Bertrand's private notebooks
dating from his time as RG chief, which were published October 9 in
the weekly Le Point.
One of those excerpts suggests that, when he was interior
minister, Sarkozy had received bribes in an arms-smuggling affair
currently being tried in Paris.
One excerpt is dated June 2002, and reads, 'Tassez received money
from Falcone for Sarko, from Jean-Cristophe and African heads of
state.'
Another excerpt, from July 2, 2003, reads, 'Sarko 150,000 (French)
francs in cash in his office.'
The excerpt refers to French businessman Pierre Falcone, who is
currently being tried for allegedly setting up, with Russian-Israeli
billionaire Arcadi Gaydamak, a vast arms-trafficking network with the
Angolan regime in the 1990s.
Also referred to in the excerpt are two of Falcone's co-defendants
in the so-called Angolagate affair, Jean-Cristophe Mitterand, son of
the former French president Francois Mitterand, and businessman Jean-
Noel Tassez.
Falcone is suspected of having bribed a number of French
politicians in the affair.
Other excerpts from Bertrand's notebooks published in Le Point
refer to an alleged affair Sarkozy had with the wife of a lawmaker
and suggest that builders who had constructed a house for him were
paid 'off the books,' so that no taxes would have to be paid.
In an interview published October 10 in the daily Le Parisien,
Bertrand said that at least 80 per cent of the information he
received consisted of unverified rumours and gossip that were rarely
exploited officially.
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