Barely an hour after former French president Nicolas Sarkozy left office on Tuesday, one of his former senior advisers revealed that he has been charged with money laundering. Several of Sarkozy’s allies have been implicated in a string of graft investigations and he could face questioning or even charges himself in a month’s time when the judicial immunity he enjoyed as president expires. In the latest twist, Thierry Gaubert, who was Sarkozy’s adviser when he was mayor of Neuilly in 1983 and again when he was budget minister between 1993 and 1995, said he had been accused of laundering illegal campaign donations. Gaubert had already been accused of embezzlement and interfering with a witness in the so-called “Karachi affair”, which revolves around alleged kickbacks on a deal to sell French submarines to Pakistan.
