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The story of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise and fall is part spy novel, part box set of The Thick of It. Allegations of a secret pact with a dictator. Unexplained meetings between figures close to government and a known terrorist. And so much cash that party workers don’t know what to do with it.

The former French President was jailed last year for conspiring to fund his 2007 election campaign with money from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. He’s currently appealing his sentence. And he has some powerful supporters.

Using archive recordings and contemporary interviews with those who know Sarkozy well, Tristan Redman tells the story of how he became the first former French head of state to end up behind bars since Nazi collaborator, Philippe Pétain. He hears details of extraordinary meetings in Libya between prominent members of the French government and Abdullah Senoussi – a man linked to terrorist acts including Lockerbie and the attack on a French plane which crashed in 1989, killing all 170 people on board. But he also hears stories of a man determined to change France, a charismatic politician with boundless energy.

How did Nicolas Sarkozy go from politician who inspired Obama-esque excitement to inmate #320535 of the notorious La Santé prison?

Featuring investigative journalist, Fabrice Arfi from Mediapart; Daniele Klein whose brother was killed in the ‘French Lockerbie’ and her niece Melanie who lost her father; Alain Minc, one of Nicolas Sarkozy’s closest friends and advisers; the British writer and academic Andrew Hussey and Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, who was Sarkozy’s finance minister.

Image: Nicolas Sarkozy (L) with Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli 2007. Credit: Patrick Kovarik/Getty Images