Paris (AFP) – Three former executives of the UMP, including one close to Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Cesari, were taken into custody Thursday in Bygmalion investigating a system of false invoices during the campaign 2012 presidential election.
Eric Cesari, nicknamed “Sarko’s eye” to the UMP, financial former head of the party, Fabienne Liadze and his former communications director Peter Chassat, “have were arrested at their homes this morning, “to be placed in custody at the anticorruption office of the judicial police in Nanterre, told AFP judicial source.
Their custody may last 48 hours, such as the three former executives Bygmalion, the main provider company meetings sarkozystes, who was indicted Wednesday for forgery and or complicity.
After Bygmalion executives, investigators and judges will question those of the UMP to look at how the system was put in place and who gave the order.
Wednesday, before the judge, a co-founder of Bygmalion Guy Alves, confirmed his participation in a massive fraud to disguise the campaign account of Nicolas Sarkozy. “A device (…) under which the UMP took over irregularly campaign costs of Nicolas Sarkozy,” said his lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve.
This maneuver would allow the campaign budget of Nicolas Sarkozy not to explode the ceiling fixed by law for candidates to be on an equal footing, or € 22.5 million for those reaching the second round.
For this, Event and Co., a subsidiary of Bygmalion event had many expenses charged to the UMP and not the Sarkozy campaign via fictitious conventions of the party. An evaluation on file, no less than 18.5 million euros have been evaded campaign account, said a source familiar with the matter.
In late June, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened investigation for “forgery and use of forgeries”, “breach of trust” and “attempted fraud”
-. “I have often heard of Bygmalion” –
As she was heading first to suspicions of overbilling the benefit of Bygmalion, the case exploded late May with the revelations of the Corporate Counsel, Patrick Maisonneuve, then the confession Jerome Lavrilleux.
right arm party leader Jean-Francois Cope, Jerome Lavrilleux was deputy campaign manager of Nicolas Sarkozy. On the set of BFM TV, tears in his eyes, he recognized “a skid on the number of meetings” and conceded the establishment of an occult system.
On the eve of his custody mid-June, Mr. Lavrilleux had questioned Eric Cesari and Fabienne Liadze in an interview with AFP. According to him, once the presidential lost, we had to find a solution “in an absolute emergency.” According to his version, the decision to charge expenses to the UMP and not in the country had been taken at the party headquarters during a meeting between Eric Cesari, Fabienne Liadze, the campaign manager Guillaume Lambert and Franck Attal,
Guy Alves officer of Event and Co., things would have turned out differently. “He was informed by the Director of Event, Mr. Attal, that the application had been made by Lavrilleux on behalf of the UMP,” said Wednesday his lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve.
The One objective of investigators and prosecutors is to determine how far we were informed in the UMP and the campaign team of such fraud and if the leading roles, such as Jean-Francois Cope and Nicolas Sarkozy himself could ignore it. Judicial review of the former leaders of Bygmalion indicted forbids them to meet particular MM. Sarkozy and Cope.
“I learned the name of Bygmalion long after the presidential campaign,” had assured the former head of state during his televised speech for his return to politics, 21 September.
Wednesday night, his rival François Fillon has clearly distanced itself from this. “I was not involved in the organization of the 2012 campaign but I have often heard of Bygmalion, and I have often seen that Bygmalion was a company who regularly worked with the UMP”, a-t he said on BFM TV.
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