Tristan Redman

What was your reaction when you got this email? I didn't pause for two seconds. I knew we had to go, travel to a foreign country. I won't say which in order to protect my sources, but we had to go and see. Fabrice and his reporting partner Carl Laskey meet their source and they get their hands on a hard drive.

It's fascinating, this hard disk. It's like sort of Alibaba's cave, and there are 19,000 documents. Fabrice now has the digital archive of a man called Ziad Takidin. And he's an important character in this story. Takidin is a Lebanese businessman. He's not well known to the public, but he is well known as a fixer and a middleman in some circles at the top of French politics.

As Fabrice digs, one name keeps coming up. He's someone we've already heard about in this story, back in 2005. And if you remember, back then, Abdullah Senussi, Gaddafi's number two, met with Sarkozy's number two, Claude Guéant, in Tripoli. He was the man who authorized terrorism when Libya was a terrorist state.

Fabrice says that Tachydyn is a lynchpin in all of this. Both the high-ranking French officials who met with Senussi in secret in 2005 have said that they knew Tachydyn and that he was present during those meetings. All of this could be circumstantial, tangential of course. So Fabrice keeps digging and he gets his hands on a new document. A document which is still contested and will become hugely significant.

It looks like an official Libyan government document dated 2006 and signed by one of Gaddafi's closest advisors. If true, this document would confirm the allegations already made by Gaddafi's son in that interview with Euronews. Fabrice had to be sure it was genuine. He launched a series of extensive checks to verify it.

The authenticity of this document has been disputed ever since. Sarkozy says it's a forgery, and he sued Media Park three times in court. He lost all three cases. But then, in Sarkozy's trial, its credibility was once again called into question. Fabrice believes there's enough evidence that it's authentic. But at this point, he's left with a difficult choice –

Koska kun hän on valmis kirjoittamaan, se on tärkein mahdollinen hetki. Se on 2012 presidentiaalinen kampanja ja Sarkozy haluaa uudistua. Olimme erittäin varmoja, että kun tämä näkyy presidentiaalisen kampanjaan, me olisimme kritisoineet. Tämä tieto, jota he ajattelivat, oli liian tärkeää. Joten Fabrice ja hänen kollegansa päätivät kirjoittaa.

On the campaign trail, Sarkozy is asked by the French TV channel TF1 about the Libya allegations.

Is it true, he's asked, that Colonel Gaddafi financed him last time round in 2007? It's grotesque, he says. To be questioned about what Gaddafi or his son, a regime of dictators with no credibility, he says public debate has reached a new low.

A few days later, Nicolas Sarkozy loses the election to Francois Hollande. And media part, he believes, is partly to blame. It's a humiliation.

Tämä on Ziad Takidin, aiemmin lebanilaisen puolustajan. Hän puhuu kameralla, koska Sarkozi on valittu uudestaan. Takidin päättyy kertoa hänen tarinoistaan France Télévision kanssa. Se sisältyy kappaleeseen, jossa on paljon rahaa.

Tässä ei ole mitään muuta kuin rahaa. Tässä on noin 1,5 miljoonaa. 500 euroa ja muutama 200 euroa. Hieman 200 euroa.

Jotenkin se, mitä hän sanoo, on tärkeää sarkaisin kampanjan vastaan. Hänen sanomansa on luotettu järjestöjen kautta. Takidin sanoo, että 2005 Abdullah Sanousi, Gaddafi's number two, pyysi hänet käyttämään kolme sukkia rahaa takaisin Franciaan.

He asks me because he trusts me. So I take it and I deliver it. Takirin says he'd pick up a suitcase in Tripoli and bring it to Paris on a scheduled flight. And then when he'd landed, he'd walk straight through customs. He'd get into a car at the airport and head for central Paris.

Now, I don't need to remind you who was working in the interior ministry at the time of these supposed deliveries. But I will say that Sarkozy and his entourage have denied receiving any of them. But crucially, in the political world, these allegations have an impact, because they surfaced just as Sarkozy's been out of office for a few years and is trying to engineer a comeback. It's 2016, and he's hoping to win a primary to run for president again.

There's a big debate on the French TV channel, France 2, and it's hosted by one of France's best known news anchors, David Pujadas. Pujadas asked Sarkozy about Takedin's accusation. Sarkozy looks absolutely furious. What an indignity, he says.

A few days later, Sarkozy comes in third place in the primary. There will be no comeback. But if the former president is worried about indignities, there are more of those to come. In March 2018, he's questioned by police for 25 hours and then placed under formal investigation over the Gaddafi allegations.

In the French system, that's like being charged. Sarkozy is going to face a trial over his links to Muammar Gaddafi. This is Alain Manck, one of Nicolas Sarkozy's oldest friends. We're in his huge Paris office on the Avenue Georges V. It's one of the fanciest streets in the city, right next to the famous cabaret club, the Crazy Horse.

What do you know about Nicolas Sarkozy's relationship with Muammar Gaddafi?

Monsieur Mank tells me that one Sunday, shortly after Sarkozy's election, he was with the president and his then wife Cecilia. Mank says Sarkozy was in the middle of a tough negotiation with Gaddafi about a prisoner release. But Mank didn't get the feeling there was anything cozy about the exchanges between the two men. He says Gaddafi was negotiating hard.