Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the wife of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has been questioned as a suspect in a witness-tampering case against her husband, according to local media reports Thursday.
The 56-year-old supermodel was questioned as a witness in the case last year but is now considered a suspect, according to Le Monde. The witness tampering case is linked to allegations that her husband accepted money from Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan autocrat, to help finance an election campaign.
Bruni-Sarkozy was at the Paris offices of the Central Office for the Fight Against Corruption and Financial and Tax Offenses on Thursday, according to MailOnline. A source told the outlet that the former first lady of France is a “free suspect,” adding: “She has spoken to officers before, but not as a suspect in a case in which she’s accused of trying to whitewash her husband.”
Sarkozy was charged last year with illegal witness tampering in connection with the Libya funding allegations. Authorities suspect that multiple people in Sarkozy’s orbit were involved in an effort to pressure a key witness—Ziad Takieddine, a Franco-Lebanese businessman—to retract a statement he’d made that incriminated Sarkozy.
Takieddine had originally claimed that he’d delivered three suitcases containing more than $5 million worth of euros to Sarkozy’s campaign staff in 2006 and 2007, but he suddenly recanted on his claims in 2020, raising suspicions that he’d been pressured to do so.
Takieddine dropped his accusations in an interview with the magazine Paris Match. Michèle Marchand—an influential figure in the French media dubbed the “paparazzi queen”—was charged with witness tampering in 2021.
According to Le Monde, an investigation found that Bruni-Sarkozy deleted all messages she’d exchanged with Marchand on the day that Marchand was charged. The former first lady is also reportedly suspected of helping Marchand and a paparazzo get hold of COVID tests in October 2020 that allowed them to travel to Lebanon where the interview with Takieddine took place.
Bruni-Sarkozy is now one of 11 defendants in the case, the newspaper reports, all of whom are suspected of misleading the justice system in France.
