It’s a scandal that has all the trappings of a Hollywood thriller. A secret meeting by the Eiffel Tower. Millions of euros crossing borders in suitcases. Cash payments to key people close to politicians. A former member of a terrorist regime whisked from his jail cell in another country. A president on the defensive. Lies, accusations, counter-accusations, assassination attempts, and the suspicious drowning in the Danube of a former diplomat.

It may read like fiction, but it’s all too real.

SARKOZY – GADDAFI: THE SCANDAL OF ALL SCANDALS lays out the evidence for the case that Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan government financed Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. Two investigative journalists from the scrappy digital news website Mediapart detail what they’ve learned over more than a decade of chasing the story — from the treasure trove of documents on a political fixer’s hard drive, to transcripts of phone calls and text messages, all implicating the president and his closest associates in an alleged conspiracy to help elect Sarkozy and rehabilitate Gaddafi’s reputation as a terrorist outcast.

For years, Sarkozy has treated the accusations with contempt, saying they don’t even deserve a response. It was all “hatred, mud, mediocrity, spite, and slander,” he said in an interview, arguing that Mediapart was biased and the justice system weaponized against him.

But the French legal system disagreed and put Sarkozy on trial for illegal campaign financing.

Released two days after the trial opened, SARKOZY – GADDAFI: THE SCANDAL OF ALL SCANDALS has gripped France, compellingly revealing all the ins and outs of one of the most remarkable French political scandals in decades — one with implications beyond French borders.