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June 2012

Sarkozy faces first lawsuit since immunity expired

Monday 18 June 2012 Category : , Off

 

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was hit on Monday by the first formal legal complaint against him since his judicial immunity as head of state expired. The complaint came from a lawyer acting for victims of a 2002 bombing in Karachi that investigators believe may be linked to a long-running corruption and illegal party-financing case. France's constitution shields presidents from testifying, being investigated and prosecution until a month after their term is up, which for Sarkozy was on Friday.

 His immunity had kept him from being involved in probes into a submarine sale to Pakistan in the 1990s and, separately, into relations between him, his party and France's wealthiest woman. 

In the so-called "Karachi Affair", judges are trying to unravel dealings by middlemen and possible kickbacks linked to France's sale of Agosta class submarines to Pakistan. Investigators are looking into whether the sale was the source of illegal party financing during the 1995 presidential campaign. 

They are also investigating whether a 2002 bomb blast in Karachi that killed 11 French nationals was a reprisal for Paris' decision to stop paying commissions on the sale. A lawyer for the victims filed the complaint, accusing Sarkozy and his aides of illegally gaining access to elements of the inquiry, compromising investigators' independence. 

The lawyer, Olivier Morice, said an official denial by Sarkozy's office last September that he had any involvement in the case revealed that he was illegally privy to elements of the investigation even though he was not part of the probe.

 The presidential palace denied at the time that it had access to documents in the case, which was widely reported on by media and which cast a legal cloud over Sarkozy's unsuccessful bid for a second term. Sarkozy risks being entangled in a second, unrelated case in which investigators are looking into whether cash withdrawals from the account of L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt were used to finance Sarkzoy's 2007 campaign. 

Sarkozy's lawyer has handed over his 2007 diary to investigators to fight allegations that he visited Bettencourt during the campaign, Le Journal du Dimanche reported. Legal sources told the weekly publication that investigators were considering searching Sarkozy's house. Socialist Francois Hollande defeated Sarkozy last month, promising to boost growth, cut unemployment and rid state business of murky affairs which have dogged it in the past under both right and left-wing administrations.

Obodo: Police comb Effurun, Warri for kidnappers

Sunday 10 June 2012 Category : , , Off

 The Delta State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Ikechukwu Aduba, yesterday, confirmed the abduction of Christian Obodo, when contacted by Sunday Vanguard, saying the police were combing for his kidnappers. The commissioner, however, noted, “The police are surprised at his abduction as Obodo did not inform us about his presence for adequate security to be provided for him”. 

 Obodo Aduba said, “We heard about the kidnap and we are not resting on our oars to track down the people that kidnapped him. If we could provide security for expatriates that come into the state, there is no way we could not have provided security for him if he had informed us”, he said. A security source said, “The Super Eagles player is a high profile Nigerian and easily a target for kidnappers in such places like Warri and Effurun , and what he should have done was to hint the police about his visit so that they could keep an eye on him to avoid what had just happened. 

 It was gathered that Obodo who was born in Warri on 11 May, 1984, came to Warri to reunite with some old friends and had attended different clubs on Friday night with friends. Some informants, believed to be working for a kidnap gang, who witnessed how he showed off in one of the clubs, contacted the kidnappers who tailed him Saturday morning and abducted him, while cruising in his customized car. Security was beefed up in Warri and environs after the incident as the police patrolled different parts of the city in search of the footballer.

 It is believed that those who knew Obodo very organized his abduction on Jakpa Road, Effurun, to fleece money from him, but as at press time, it is not known if they had mentioned any ransom. His car was reportedly abandoned around New Layout area, also in Effurun by the gunmen to avoid detection, but his whereabouts were not known.

 A top security official confided to Sunday Vanguard, “We don’t believe that those who kidnapped Obodo came from the moon, they are around us, they may not even have left town, they could be keeping him somewhere within and around the state to ask for ransom later, so we are not going to take chances”. “They would want to keep him in a place they think is secure before they begin to ask him to call his family and associates for ransom, but we strongly advise that such information should be passed to security agents to enable us track them down”, he said.

2015: Buhari, Tinubu bury ambitions, to anoint candidate

Category : , , , , Off

 Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, presidential candidate in the April 2011 election, General Muhammadu Buhari, and leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, may have agreed to bury their differences and aspirations as the CPC and ACN rapprochement continues to gather momentum. The two met in Kaduna at the residence of Buhari last Thursday. 

Both men also drove together to Kano to the waiting embrace of a mammoth crowd. It was gathered, at the weekend, that discussions between both men centred on how to proceed preparatory to the 2015 general elections. Of specific concern, Sunday Vanguard was told by a source privy to the meeting, was the issue of presenting a “united front for the presidential engagement”. 

 Although talks are still on, the source said that one of the first steps to be taken by each of the parties “would be the movement towards the centre”. To this end, both men are said to be disposed to a compromise that “would see each relegating his ambition for the common good of the proposed alliance”. If all goes well, both men, according to our source, would seek and anoint candidates for the presidential election.

 In fact, the reason both leaders have decided to commence talks in earnest is “just so they would avoid the type of last minute rancour that led to the collapse of talks last year”, a source said. It would be recalled that last-minute efforts by the ACN and CPC to forge an alliance for last year’s presidential election collapsed. The inability of each of the party’s leaders to subsume their ambitions led to the collapse of the talks.

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