Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was detained for questioning as part of a widening corruption inquiry into influence peddling, Agence France-Presse reported, making it the first time a former French president has been held. The anti-corruption investigators have the right to hold the former president for up to 24 hours, with a possible additional 24-hour extension. After this 48-hour deadline, magistrates will decide whether to charge him.

He arrived, voluntarily, early this morning to be questioned by a special anti-corruption team of magistrates at their offices in Nanterre, west of Paris, a day after his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, and two magistrates were detained. According to French Le Monde, investigators want to establish the former 59-year-old president’s involvement in three cases: They’re probing into whether he received illegal funding worth 50 million euros for his 2007 presidential campaign from former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi; the circumstances surrounding the money he is alleged to have received from L’Oreal SA heiress Liliane Bettencourt; and his role in former-Finance Minister Christine Lagarde’s decision on an arbitration settlement worth 400 million euros with disgraced French businessman Bernard Tapie, believed to have been rigged by Mr. Sarkozy. The French newspaper reports that the phone tapping as part of the Gaddafi probe led to the influence-peddling investigation. Investigators believe that Mr. Sarkozy had been tipped off that his phone was tapped. It was in connection to the ongoing Gaddafi case that judges received the authority to tap his phones.

“Nicolas Sarkozy is a citizen like any other,” French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said on i-Tele television. “He benefits from the presumption of innocence.” Le Foll denied that the current government has anything to do with the probes into Sarkozy.

The unprecedented move could dash Mr. Sarkozy’s hopes for a political comeback for the 2017 presidential campaign. He says that the cases against him are politically motivated and geared towards placing obstacles to his hopes of his planned return to his country’s political front.