After 15 long and often tedious days of hearings, and in the first third of the trial into suspicions of Libyan financing of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, the court is slowly putting in place the pieces of the prosecution's puzzle. A picture is beginning to emerge, albeit imperfectly.

All 13 defendants are facing 10 years' imprisonment, with Sarkozy at the top of the list – except for one, former labor minister Eric Woerth, who is facing just one year's imprisonment for illegal campaign financing. Former president Sarkozy is accused of having entered into a "corruption pact" with Muammar Gaddafi as early as 2005, through close associates and a long series of intermediaries.

Sarkozy has naturally denied this with unflagging energy – no doubt a little shaken by the electronic bracelet he had fitted on Friday, February 7, after he was found guilty of illegal attempts to secure favors from a judge. Most Libyan dignitaries, including Gaddafi himself, his son, the then prime minister, various intelligence chiefs, the oil minister who was found drowned in the Danube... all of them claimed with a certain unity in 2011 that Libya had paid for the presidential candidate's campaign, some of them allegedly in possession of proof and even recordings. "If there were the slightest recording, we'd have a million copies of it," protested Sarkozy once again on Wednesday. "I'm a bit fed up with people telling me that there's financing and evidence everywhere, without putting a single piece of it under my nose."

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