Sarkozy goes on trial over alleged corruption pact with Libya's former dictator

The French former president Nicolas Sarkozy will go on trial today over the biggest political financing scandal in modern French history, in which he is alleged to have received millions of euros in illegal election campaign funding from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

- Angelique Chrisafis

The historic trial of the rightwing former president and 12 other people - including three former government ministers - for criminal conspiracy to receive funds from a foreign dictator threatens to worsen voters' already low trust in the French political class.

After a 10-year investigation, the court will hear allegations of what investigative magistrates called a "corruption pact" between Sarkozy, who was president between 2007 and 2012, and the Libyan regime, in which middlemen delivered suitcases full of cash to ministry buildings in Paris to illegally fund Sarkozy's 2007 campaign.

The court will examine whether, in exchange, the Libyan regime requested diplomatic, legal and business favours.

One alleged request for favours relates to Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi's spy chief and enforcer. Senussi had been convicted in absentia to life imprisonment by a French court in 1999 for his role in the 1989 bombing of a UTA passenger plane over Niger that killed 170 people.

The court will hear how requests were allegedly made by the Libyan regime to Sarkozy's entourage to find a way to lift France's international arrest warrant against Senussi.