Judges grill Sarkozy

French judges yesterday grilled ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy about accusations his 2007 election campaign was financed with funds secured illegally from France's richest woman.
In a case that could wreck the 57-year-old's hopes of a political comeback, Sarkozy is suspected of taking financial advantage of elderly L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt when she was too frail to fully understand what she was doing.
Examining magistrate Jean-Michel Gentil and two other judges were expected to spend most of the day quizzing Sarkozy about how he obtained funding from Bettencourt.
Judicial sources have told AFP that Sarkozy could be formally indicted on a charge of taking advantage of someone in a position of weakness, although the magistrate also has the option of interrogating him as a witness under caution.
The allegation against Sarkozy is two-fold: that the money obtained from her took his campaign financing over legal limits and that it had been secured without her full knowledge or consent.
Sarkozy, who lost his immunity from prosecution after losing the presidential election to Hollande in May, is facing a slew of legal inquiries.
As well as the Bettencourt case, Sarkozy is facing probes into contracts for opinion polls, an illegal police investigation into journalists and alleged kickbacks on a Pakistani arms deal used to finance the right in 1995, when Sarkozy was budget minister.
Sarkozy has not ruled out another tilt at the presidency in 2017.