French newspaper MEDIAPART said the Secretary off Muammar Gaddafi, Bashir Saleh, gave a statement to the public prosecution services of Libya’s internationally recognised Government of National Unity saying that he was informed how Nicolas Sarkozy directly asked Gaddafi for “help” with his 2007 presidential election campaign.

The newspaper said Bashir said he was told Sarkozy made the approach to Gaddafi during a visit to Tripoli on October 6th 2005, when Gaddafi reportedly replied “If my friend Chirac does not stand, I am ready to help you”.

The Libyan prosecutors have also obtained a very detailed account from Gaddafi’s former personal secretary, Ahmed Ramadan, alleging how the regime funded Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.

The details of Saleh’s statement, obtained by Libyan prosecutors who travelled to question him in Dubai in 2019 were given in June this year to the judicial investigation opened in France into the suspected funding by the Gaddafi regime of Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign.

"The judge-led probe has placed Sarkozy, 67, under investigation for “corruption”, “criminal conspiracy”, “illicit campaign financing” and “receiving the proceeds of the misappropriation of public funds”. The newspaper said.

Saleh's statements are now added to the case file of the French investigation, the newspaper said, adding that the Libyan prosecutors had separately questioned Saleh in the framework of an international judicial cooperation agreed with the French. Saleh has previously claimed that he knew nothing of the Gaddafi regime’s alleged funding of Sarkozy’s campaign.

MEDIAPART revealed a document on April 28th 2012 recovered from the archives of the Gaddafi regime and it was a note dated December 2006 and addressed to Saleh by the then head of Libya's foreign intelligence agency Moussa Koussa, who detailed an agreement to fund Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign.

"On May 3rd 2012, Saleh was secretly smuggled out of France in an operation involving Bernard Squarcini, then Head of the French domestic intelligence service, and Alexandre Djouhri, a business intermediary close to Sarkozy and now a key suspect in the Libyan funding investigation." The newspaper reported.