The substantive debates on this wiretapping case before the Paris Court of Appeal ended on Monday, September 12. Place, now, in the indictment and the pleadings.
What to remember from these six days of hearing? On the form, incontestably, the atmosphere was calmer than in the first instance, in March 2021. Both on the side of the defense and the prosecution, the lesson of excesses has been learned. It is no longer the trial of the Paris Bar against the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), the first summoning its major witnesses to the aid of one of its own, Thierry Herzog, to be indignant that we have been able to listen and transcribing the conversations between a lawyer and his client, the second dispatching his boss to justify the considerable means of investigation which have been deployed.
Both rang false. One, in this case, Thierry Herzog acted more like a friend of forty years, an unconditional “groupie” of Nicolas Sarkozy, than a lawyer, and friendship does not mix well with respect for ethics. Two, the PNF, undermined by internal dissension, challenged in its effectiveness and concerned about its own survival, did not present, in this case, the necessary serenity that any litigant is entitled to expect from the public prosecutor.
Remain before the Court of Appeal, three defendants, Nicolas Sarkozy, Thierry Herzog, and the ex-magistrate Gilbert Azibert, faced with the tapping and what they reveal. Even cleared of the sound and fury of the first instance, their content is indisputable.
They testify on the one hand that in 2014, worried about the consequences that the seizure of his diaries could have in the cases which threatened him, Nicolas Sarkozy did seek to find out about the position that the Court of Cassation was going to take vis-à-vis regarding the validity or otherwise of this entry. The former president counted for this on the close relationship that his friend and lawyer Thierry Herzog had with Gilbert Azibert and on the supposed interpersonal skills of the latter, a member of a civil chamber of the Court of Cassation, with his peers in the criminal chamber.
Influencing the decision of the Court of Cassation
Just as indisputably, the transcription of these wiretaps reveals that Thierry Herzog, who knows that his magistrate friend is aiming for an honorary post in Monaco for his retirement, paid 5,000 euros a year, intervenes twice with Nicolas Sarkozy so that he touches on his relations in the Principality – “He told me about something about Monaco… A position becoming available, he made a request, he seems to be in a good position, but he said to me, “uh, I dare not ask, maybe I will need a helping hand” – and that the former president formally undertakes to intervene on his behalf: “He wants to work in Monaco? Well, well, don’t worry, tell him I’ll take care of it because I’m going to Monaco and I’ll see the prince…”
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