Four Arrested in French Opposition Party Funding Probe

Local Editor

Four people were arrested and placed in custody on Monday as part of a fraud investigation into an events firm employed by France’s conservative UMP party during Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2012 election campaign, police and legal sources said.

The arrests, which included Bastien Millot, the former chief executive of the Bygmalion company, come a week after Sarkozy announced he would run for the presidency of the opposition UMP in a widely flagged come-back bid.

Sarkozy has stated he was not aware of any wrongdoing but some UMP members fear that this and other legal cases in which he is targeted make him too much of a political liability for him to be the party’s presidential candidate in 2017.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team