First Charges in Scandal Over Sarkozy Campaign

Three people were charged on Wednesday over a scandal relating to the funding of former French leader Nicolas Sarkozy's 2012 presidential campaign.

It was the first time charges had been pressed in the so-called Bygmalion affair and came only two weeks after Sarkozy made a triumphant return to front-line French politics.

The trio charged are all former employees of the PR firm Bygmalion, which organised events for Sarkozy's ultimately unsuccessful 2012 tilt at the Elysee Palace.

Guy Alves and Bastien Millot, former Bygmalion directors, were charged with complicity in forgery and use of forged documents.

The third man, Franck Attal, former head of the events arm of Bygmalion, was charged with forgery and use of forged documents.

Bygmalion is accused of falsifying invoices for staging Sarkozy events, billing the conservative UMP party instead of the Sarkozy campaign.

The alleged fraud was supposedly carried out to circumvent strict campaign funding rules.

A lawyer for Alves, Patrick Maisonneuve, told reporters that his client had told judges there was "a system put in place under which the UMP paid campaign fees in an irregular fashion".

According to a source close to the inquiry, the UMP picked up the tab for around 18.5 million euros ($23.3 million) in expenses that should have been billed to the Sarkozy campaign.

Spending on presidential campaigns in France is limited to 22.5 million euros.

Sarkozy has always denied any wrongdoing in the affair. But he is also embroiled in a series of other legal tangles that threaten to hamper his comeback in French politics.

One of the roles of the inquiry will be to determine who was in the loop within the campaign.

The deputy director of the campaign, Jerome Lavrilleux, dropped the bombshell in May that bills were passed off as invoices for party conferences. He has said that neither Sarkozy nor then UMP chief Jean-Francois Cope knew.

However, Cope later fell on his sword, resigning from the party leadership.

Last month, Sarkozy lifted the lid on the worst-kept secret in French politics when he announced he was running to be the leader of the UMP party despite his legal woes.

Although undeclared, the endgame is seen as an attempt to grab back the keys of the Elysee Palace from the man who beat him in 2012, the now deeply unpopular Francois Hollande.