Thierry Gaubert always seems a little absent, as if the matter doesn't really concern him much; perhaps his constant tan has something to do with that. On Thursday, February 6, with more aplomb than imagination, he stuck to a version of events that left the court genuinely stunned, on the 15th day of the trial on allegations that Libyan money had financed former president Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
On January 31, 2006, the Libyan treasury paid €2,999,900 to a discreet company registered in the British Virgin Islands, Rossfield Trading Ltd, founded by French-Lebanese arms broker Ziad Takieddine. Two days later, Rossfield transferred €440,000 to the Cactus trust, which Gaubert had set up in the Bahamas – "it was a bank that advised me to go to the Bahamas," Gaubert, a senior executive at the Caisse d'Epargne bank, said modestly. As it happens, Gaubert was friends with all of Sarkozy, former interior minister and close Sarkozy's friend Brice Hortefeux, and Takieddine. The investigators suspect he was a perfect middleman for laundering part of the money sent by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
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