Mr Sarkozy's UMP party has previously denied any allegations it was involved in a plot against Mr Strauss-Kahn.
Rashid Kaci - A French Muslim politician and leader of a faction within the ruling Gaullist UMP party.
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Mr Sarkozy, who led the centre-right UMP party, was defeated in the May 2012 presidential election by Socialist rival Francois Hollande.
Sarkozy, who leads the center-right UMP party, received 27.2% of the vote in the first round of voting, just behind Hollande's 28.6%.
The announcement inches Sarkozy, who heads the governing UMP party closer to the presidential palace after a high-profile political career spanning three decades.
In his final address Friday, Sarkozy, of the center-right UMP party, picked up on the debate over immigration as he appealed for the nation's support.
Francois Fillon has set up his own faction of the UMP party in the French parliament, demanding a repeat of the leadership ballot within three months.
Some on the right wonder whether Ms Lagarde could be a future candidate for first female French president, notably because she has stayed outside the conservative UMP party's vicious in-fighting.
She referred the case to an arbitration panel, after which Mr Tapie switched his support to Nicholas Sarkozy, then leader of Ms Lagarde's UMP party, in the presidential election campaign.
Reuters news agency reports that Mrs Bettencourt has not spoken of giving money to Mr Sarkozy and has said she has no memory of giving money to the former treasurer of his UMP party, Eric Woerth.
In France, the presidential office of Nicolas Sarkozy found itself having to backtrack on a promise made by Mr Sarkozy that big-name politicians elected to the European Parliament for his UMP party would have to take their seats.
Both Sarkozy, of the center-right UMP party, and Hollande have been working hard to reach out to France's undecided voters in the two weeks since the first-round vote on April 22 left them the only two still in the race.
CNN: French presidential rivals enter final day of campaigning
After Tuesday's lower house vote, a group of senators filed a legal challenge with the country's Constitutional Council, according to a statement published on the UMP conservative opposition party's senate website.
The right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) - the party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy - is defending an absolute majority in the current National Assembly.
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The new UMP leader insisted reconciliation within the party would be "easy and natural", according to the centre-right newspaper Le Figaro.
Legislative elections are scheduled for June 10 and 17, and Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement party, known by its French acronym UMP, needs to hold on to its majority in parliament if it wants to be sure of pushing through his plans.
According to a French Institute of Public Opinion poll released Wednesday, 56% of the supporters of his party -- the Union for a Popular Movement, known as UMP -- prefer Sarkozy as their candidate for the 2017 presidential election.
Brave talk, which lasted right until the moment that election results arrived from the electoral district of Central France, revealing that UMP voters had turned out in sufficient numbers to elect three MEPs from that party, incuding Mr Sarkozy's close ally and employment minister, Brice Hortefeux.
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