The former head of France’s DGSI domestic intelligence agency was placed under formal investigation on Wednesday on suspicions of influence peddling. Squarcini was a close ally of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

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Bernard "The Shark" Squarcini is suspected of using his police contacts to obtain confidential information about investigations for private clients after he was dismissed as spy chief following Sarkozy's failed 2012 re-election bid.

Squarcini, who set up a private consultancy after losing his job, is also accused of illegally using secret information.

While Sarkozy is not himself accused in the affair, the case has added to the scandals engulfing him as he campaigns for his centre-right Les Républicains (formerly the UMP) party nomination ahead of the 2017 presidential vote.

On Tuesday he was hit by fresh allegations of accepting millions of euros from deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to fund his 2007 presidential campaign. Judicial sources confirmed that investigators had retrieved a diary belonging to former Libyan prime minister Shukri Ghanem that details a series of transfers to Sarkozy's campaign totaling €6.5 million.

Ghanem, who defected from Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, was found dead in 2012 in the Danube river in Vienna.

Sarkozy has denied the claims from several former Gaddafi loyalists that he was in the pocket of the Libyan leader, whom he helped oust during a 2011 NATO-led bombing campaign in which France fired the first shot.

Meanwhile, two news pols show that Sarkozy has lost ground against his main conservative rival in the race for France's Republican party presidential nomination, two polls showed on Wednesday, hurt by legal and political setbacks.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007-2012, is pitching himself as a man of action who will push for a new European Union treaty, be tough on immigration, and defend France against militant Islam.

While his message resonates with voters tempted by the buoyant far-right National Front, he risks alienating mainstream center-right voters.

In one poll by Kantar Sofres-Onepoint, support for Sarkozy in the Nov 20 primary first round dipped 1 point to 33 percent, while backing for party frontrunner Alain Juppe, a former prime minister, climbed 5 points to 39 percent.

A second poll showed Juppe, a moderate who styles himself as an elder statesman, steady at 35 percent in the first round while Sarkozy shed 2 points at 31 percent.

Both polls showed Juppe winning the primary contest's second round, due on Nov. 27, by at least a 10 point margin.

Whoever wins the center-right party ticket is odds-on favorite to win the presidential election.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen is on course for a place in a head-to-head second round but will almost certainly fail to win, polls show. President Francois Hollande, who has not yet declared he will run, is the country's most unpopular leader and his ruling Socialist Party is riven by internal divisions.

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