“If you had told me that I would have problems because of Gaddafi, I would have said: ‘What are you smoking?’” Sarkozy said at one point, claiming that investigators had not found a single piece of evidence against him.

The 63-year-old, who served as French leader from 2007 to 2012, was charged with corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of Libyan public money on Thursday evening after two days of questioning in police custody.

Under the French system, charging a suspect means that investigators believe they have strong and corroborated evidence against them, but the defendant can appeal and the case can still be dropped before a trial.

The allegations that Sarkozy took money from Gaddafi – whom he welcomed to Paris in 2007 but then helped to topple in 2011 – are the most serious out of several investigations that have dogged him since he left office.

“I am hurt deeply as a person, not for me, for my country,” Sarkozy said in his concluding remarks on the TF1 channel. “You can’t drag people into the mud because some killers wanted to do it. I can’t let them get away with it.”

Earlier in a statement released to Le Figaro newspaper, Sarkozy said he had been “living the hell of this slander since March 11, 2011,” when the first allegations against him emerged via Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam.

He went as far as to blame “the controversy launched by Gaddafi and his henchmen” for his failure to win re-election in 2012, when Francois Hollande, a Socialist, took the presidency.

Since 2013, investigators have been looking into claims by several figures in Gaddafi’s ousted regime that Sarkozy’s campaign received cash from the dictator.

In 2011, as Nato-backed forces were preparing to drive Gaddafi out of power, Seif al-Islam told the Euronews network that Sarkozy must “give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign”.

Sarkozy has dismissed the allegations as the rantings of vindictive Gaddafi loyalists who were furious over the French-led military intervention that helped end Gaddafi’s 41-year rule and ultimately led to his death.

He has also unsuccessfully sued the investigative website Mediapart for publishing a document allegedly signed by Libya’s intelligence chief showing that Gaddafi agreed to give Sarkozy up to 50 million euros ($62 million). The courts have ruled it can be used as evidence.

Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine also claims to have delivered three suitcases stuffed with a total of five million euros (US$6.15 million) to Sarkozy and his chief of staff in 2006 and 2007.