© Reuters / Gonzalo FuentesFormer French bling-bling President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A corruption probe involving former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been temporarily suspended, a judicial source said Wednesday. The case relates to Sarkozy's alleged attempt to seek inside information from a magistrate investigating him.
The Paris appeals court decided Tuesday to freeze the investigation into influence-peddling pending a review of Sarkozy's request to have the case dismissed, a source close to the investigation told AFP on Wednesday. The suspension could last several months.
Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation in July over the corruption allegations. Investigators are seeking to establish whether Sarkozy, with the help of his lawyer, attempted to pervert the course of justice by
seeking to obtain inside information from a high court magistrate about a probe into possible misdeeds in the financing of his 2007 election campaign.
Investigators
suspect that Sarkozy was tipped off that his mobile phone had been tapped by judges looking into allegations that his campaign had been
financed in part by former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Sarkozy has denied the claims that he received up to €50 million ($70 million at the time) from the Libyan leader. Judges last year obtained unprecedented authorisation to tap the phones of a former president in connection with the Gaddafi investigation, which is ongoing.
The magistrate, Gilbert Azibert, was charged in the case along with Sarkozy's lawyer, Thierry Herzog.
Sarkozy and Herzog argue that the
wiretaps on their phone calls were illegal.
Political comeback?The announcement of the case's suspension comes days after
Sarkozy announced his intention to seek the leadership of his conservative UMP (
Union for a Popular Movement) party in a political comeback that many believe will help pave the way for him to launch a renewed bid for the presidency in 2017. Sarkozy lost his 2012 re-election campaign to President François Hollande.
The latest legal development in the Sarkozy saga offers something of a respite to the former president, who remains accused in several other judicial matters, including for alleged corruption.The UMP party is in disarray over internal bickering and accusations of financial mismanagement. An ongoing probe alleges that the
UMP falsely inflated invoices by up to €11 million ($14 million) to hide the fact that the party exceeded a 2012 campaign spending cap.
Another Sarkozy case involves
suspected kickbacks from a Pakistani arms deal concluded in 1995 when he was budget minister while another alleges nepotism in the award of opinion polling contracts while he was president.
From the Urban dictionary [Link] "1. The word rigged is used to describe situations where unfair advantages are given to one side of a conflict.
2. Describes the side of the a conflict that holds an unfair advantage."
"To rig" is according to [Link] "to manipulate fraudulently".
Then I looked up democracy [Link]
" 1. government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
2. a state having such a form of government:[...]
3. a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges.
4. political or social equality; democratic spirit.[...]"
Conclusion: A rigged democracy is no longer a democracy.