Sarkozy friends held

TWO close friends of President Sarkozy have been arrested by anticorruption investigators looking into the 1994 sale of submarines to Pakistan and the alleged siphoning-off of money to help fund the 1995 presidential campaign of Edouard Balladur.

The move to detain Nicolas Bazire, a witness at Sarkozy’s wedding to Carla Bruni in 2008, and best man Thierry Gaubert comes just days after Nicola Johnson, the estranged British wife of arms dealer and alleged middleman Ziad Takieddine, spoke to investigators. Ms Johnson is involved in an acrimonious divorce with her Franco-Lebanese husband.

The inquiry is into money intended as sweeteners in the sale – and may be linked to a Karachi bomb attack which killed 11 French submarine engineers, it is claimed, in reprisal for non-payment of the sweeteners.