Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is being held for questioning over suspected “influence-peddling”, say reports.
Mr Sarkozy is being quizzed by detectives at their offices in Nanterre, west of Paris. It comes after his lawyer was interviewed on Monday.
“Mr Sarkozy has been summoned to Nanterre and is being held for questioning,” a legal source told Reuters.
In March last year Mr Sarkozy was placed under formal investigation, accused of accepting envelopes stuffed with cash from Liliane Bettencourt to illegally finance his 2007 election campaign.
The 90-year-old was declared in a state of dementia in 2006 and was placed under the guardianship of her family in 2011.
The preliminary charges were issued after Mr Sarkozy was questioned for several hours in a Bordeaux courthouse.
A statement said he had been placed under investigation “for taking advantage of a vulnerable person in February 2007 and during 2007 to the detriment of Liliane Bettencourt”.
His lawyer Thierry Herzog criticised the decision as “legally incoherent and unfair”.
Mr Sarkozy lost his immunity from prosecution when he was defeated in the 2012 presidential election by Socialist Francois Hollande.
Since then he has had to contend with a string of allegations relating to his five years in power and various election campaigns.
As well as the Bettencourt case, he has faced probes into alleged cronyism in the awarding of contracts for opinion polls, an illegal police investigation into journalists and alleged kickbacks on a Pakistani arms deal used to finance the right in 1995 when he was budget minister. Mr Sarkozy has always denied any wrongdoing.
Sky news
