France Denies Libya Funded Sarkozy’s Election Campaign

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has rejected claims by Saif al-Islam Gadhafi that Libya partly funded Sarkoy’s election campaign.

The denail came on Thursday from Sarkozy’s former presidential election campaign head, Claude Gueant. He claimed that all “electoral campaign accounts had to be verified by France’s Constitutional Council,” the BBC reports.

Describing Sarkozy as a “clown,” Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the second son of the Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, said on Wednesday that Libya had funded the electoral campaign and threatened to make bank documents proving it public. The funding of Sarkozy’s election campaign has been a sensitive topic in France over the past year. Heiress Liliane Bettencourt has been accused of offering $190,000 in cash to support Sarkozy’s presidential campaign—a sum well above the legally allowed maximum contribution.