1ST LEAD Sarkozy comes out swinging after judicial move in Libya funding case By Pól Ó Grádaigh, dpa

Paris (dpa) - French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday denounced claims he received campaign funding from former Libyan dictator Moamer Gaddafi‘s regime in 2006 and 2007 as the "slanders" of a "gang of murderers."A day after French judges put him under formal investigation in the case, Sarkozy insisted that the allegations were an act of revenge for his role in backing Libyan rebels who overthrew and eventually killed Gaddafi in 2011."The Gaddafi gang, who are a gang of murderers ... have persecuted me with insults and slanders," Sarkozy - who was president from 2007 to 2012 - told TF1 television."When did it begin? On March 10, 2011, I received Gaddafi‘s opponents, the NTC, in the Elysee [palace]. On March 11, Mr Gaddafi started talking about having financed my campaign," Sarkozy argued.Sarkozy received Gaddafi for a state visit in Paris in the year of his election, but in 2011 he led the charge for a UN mandate and NATO operation in support of Libyan rebels.The conservative politician, who lost the presidency to socialist Francois Hollande in 2012, denounced what he said was a lack of evidence in the case.According to a French judicial source, he faces potential charges of illegal campaign financing and receiving the proceeds of the embezzlement of Libyan public funds."There is not the slightest proof, there is not the slightest piece of evidence, there is not the slightest beginning of a piece of evidence," an evidently angry and indignant Sarkozy said.Sarkozy also claimed there were blatant falsehoods in the account of the Gaddafi regime‘s supposed bagman, French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine.In 2016, Takieddine told investigative news site Mediapart that he had delivered three attache cases full of cash to the French Interior Ministry, where Sarkozy was minister at the time, ahead of the 2007 election campaign.Among other inaccuracies, Takieddine claimed to have met Sarkozy on a day the latter‘s diary proved he was not in Paris, and he was wrong in his description of where the office of Sarkozy‘s chief of staff was, the ex-president said."If anyone had ever said to me that you‘re going to have problems because of Gaddafi, well, I would have said, you‘ve been smoking something," Sarkozy added.Sarkozy said he wanted the French people to know that he had never betrayed their confidence."I want everyone to know that I am deeply hurt, not for myself - I am not here to complain - but for my country and for the position that I held," he said. "No-one has the right to fling people into the mud because a gang of murderers, of crooks, of liars, of manipulators, have done what they have done."Journalists with Mediapart meanwhile disputed Sarkozy‘s claim that one of the Libyan documents it had published about the affair was a fake, and argued that there was documentary evidence of Libyan support for Sarkozy dating to before the 2011 uprising.