Ex-French president Sarkozy indignant about "disgraceful" Libya allegations

Ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is competing to retake his post as top official in 2017, on Thursday rejected "disgraceful" allegations that he took covert cash from Libya to fund his election bid in 2007.

Asked in a televised debate ahead of conservative primary over alleged Libyan campaign funding, Sarkozy said "what indignity! We are on the public service."

"You are not ashamed to echo a man who has been imprisoned, who has been condemned countless times for defamation and who is a liar?" he added, referring to French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who revealed that he delivered three suitcases from late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi containing 5 million euros (5.30 million U.S. dollars) in cash, to him and his former chief of staff and campaign director, Claude Gueant.

In an interview with Mediapart magazine, released on Tuesday, a few days ahead Sunday's first round of centre-right primary, Takieddine said he had given a written deposition to judges on Nov. 12 detailing three cash handovers between 2006 and 2007 and his meetings with them.

After a two-year break from politics, Sarkozy came back in 2014 as the leader of the crisis-hit conservative party then known as the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and is vying for a presidential ticket.

However, the former president's political future remains clouded by a series of corruption probe that could be a setback to his comeback, after failing to win a second term in 2012.

The former head of state has been placed under such a judicial probe for influence peddling in July 2014. The first was in 2013 after being charged with taking financial advantages from the elderly French billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, the heiress of L'Oreal group. But magistrates later dropped the case against him. (1 euro = 1.06 U.S. dollars) Endit