London, August 31(ANI): A British woman acrimoniously divorcing a French millionaire arms broker could hold the key to "Karachigate" that threatens to poison the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy over allegations of political corruption and murder.
Sarkozy is among a string of top French politicians embroiled in a political funding scandal involving alleged kickbacks on a 1994 arms sale to Pakistan and the death of 11 French naval engineers and four Pakistani in a bomb attack in Karachi.
Nicola Johnson, 50, has alleged that her husband Ziad Takieddine, a middleman in huge arms and petrol contracts between France and several Middle Eastern countries, has hidden his true fortune in a web of offshore accounts, The Telegraph reports.
She is demanding a 25-million-euro cut of his estate, which her lawyer estimates to be worth 104 million euros. However, Takieddine declares only relatively modest earnings of around 200,000 euros per year, the report said.
Johnson, about whom little is known, is fighting a 2009 French court ruling that provides her with just 1,000 euros per month in alimony, it added.
"[He] has put in place a highly sophisticated system to hide his revenues and his real assets to French authorities," alleged her lawyer, William Bourdon. "He long claimed that the majority of his assets didn't belong to him and that he only had temporary use of them as part of a work contract," he told Liberation newspaper.
Against the backdrop of this marital dispute, French judges hope to lift the lid on Takieddine's alleged role in the "Karachi affair".
Examining magistrates opened an inquiry last year into the submarine sale, and another involving frigates to Saudi Arabia, and they are looking into whether some of the large sums officially destined as commissions to officials served as illegal party funding in France, the paper said.
Seized documents allege that parts of the "commissions" - legal under French law at the time - were siphoned off to help fund the 1994 presidential campaign of the then Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. Sarkozy was his budget minister and campaign spokesman.
Takieddine acknowledges receiving payment from a sale of frigates to Saudi Arabia, a contract authorised in 1994 by Sarkozy, while documents obtained by Mediapart suggest he received 91 million euros between 1997 and 1998, the paper said.
France also signed a deal that year to sell three submarines to Pakistan. Several witnesses have told the magistrates that Takieddine was imposed by the Balladur camp as an intermediary, although the businessman denies any role, the paper added.
In May 2002, 11 French submarine engineers and four Pakistanis were killed in a bomb attack in Karachi, blamed on al-Qaeda terrorists. But a separate investigation is underway into whether the cancellation of commissions to Pakistani middlemen led to the 'revenge' bomb attack. (ANI)
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