Ex-Sarkozy loyalist charged in Libya campaign funding probe

Former French interior minister Claude Gueant was charged on Thursday with being part of a criminal conspiracy over allegations that ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign was funded by Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Gueant was Sarkozy's right-hand man while the right-winger was interior minister from 2005 to 2007 and then president from 2007 to 2012.

Gueant held the interior portfolio in 2011-12.

Sarkozy himself is currently on trial for corruption in a separate affair.

He had already been charged in October with being part of a criminal conspiracy over the claims that his campaign received millions of euros in illegal funding from Kadhafi.

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Sarkozy, 65, has vehemently denied the claims, arguing that he was the driving force behind the international intervention against Kadhafi, who was toppled in 2011.

The former president has faced a litany of legal woes since leaving office. He is also charged with illegal overspending on his failed 2012 re-election campaign.

On Monday he complained to the court trying him for allegedly trying to bribe a judge that he was the victim of years of "slander".