France’s ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy has supplied judges probing illegal campaign financing claims with his 2007 diary to prove he did not receive funds, a newspaper reported Sunday. Magistrates are investigating claims that staff for Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the L’Oreal cosmetics empire and France’s richest woman, handed over envelopes stuffed with cash to Sarkozy aides to finance his 2007 campaign. Sarkozy, who has denied any wrongdoing and whose presidential immunity from prosecution expired on Friday, supplied the diary to judges in Bordeaux to disprove claims from witnesses that he attended meetings in the Bettencourt household, newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche reported. His lawyer Thierry Herzog told the newspaper Sarkozy was going on the offensive “to defend himself against accusations made publicly against him for several months.”
