President Nicolas Sarkozy's reelection hopes were hit by more sleaze claims Thursday when a second close aide was charged with graft by judges investigating alleged kickbacks on an arms deal. Allegations that Sarkozy allies funded a previous centre-right campaign through a Pakistani submarine contract follow claims that party members received cases of cash from African leaders and brown envelopes from an heiress. Just seven months before he is to go to the country to seek another five year mandate, some of Sarkozy's closest allies are facing criminal investigation in a series of sensational party funding scandals. Nicolas Bazire, a businessman and former state official who was best man at Sarkozy's wedding to supermodel Carla Bruni in February 2008, was detained on Wednesday and questioned overnight before being charged on Thursday. Another Sarkozy ally, Thierry Gaubert, was charged on Wednesday as part of the probe into the Pakistani deal. Both men are now subject to judicial probes into “misuse of public funds” and could face trial, judicial sources said. Prosecutors suspect middlemen paid huge kickbacks on the Pakistani contract to members of former prime minister Edouard Balladur's 1995 presidential campaign, in which then budget minister Sarkozy served as spokesman. Bazire, 54, was Balladur's chief of staff at the prime minister's office and ran his campaign. Gaubert worked for Sarkozy when he was mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly and was his communications adviser as minister. Nevertheless, the charges against two of his closest allies pushed the story back onto the front pages Thursday, completely France's Constitutional Court was legally advised in 1995 that Balladur's campaign accounts should be rejected because of question marks over huge cash donations, but members eventually voted to approve them on a close vote. Before the Karachi scandal caught up with his inner circle, Sarkozy found himself accused of receiving illegal campaign donations from France's richest woman, 88-year-old L'Oreal shampoo heiress Liliane Bettencourt. Investigations into the Neuilly-based billionaire's finances have now been split into eight overlapping judicial probes, including one alleging illegal funding of figures from Sarkozy's centre-right UMP. Meanwhile, last week, Sarkozy's camp suffered collateral damage when lawyer Robert Bourgi alleged that between 1995 and 2005 he brought Chirac and ally Dominique de Villepin 20 million dollars from African dictators. Bourgi's claims appeared designed to damage Chirac and Villepin, Sarkozy's enemies, but the Africa middleman is now an unofficial adviser to the current president and some witnesses claim payments continued to Sarkozy's office.
