According to French media, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy, 56, was charged with hiding evidence and associating with wrongdoers to commit fraud.

She was placed under judicial control and barred from being in contact with all those accused except her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Ms Bruni-Sarkozy is also suspected of concealment of witness tampering and involvement in an attempt to bribe Lebanese judicial personnel, among other violations.

Her lawyers told AFP that Ms Bruni-Sarkozy was determined to assert her rights and challenge the “unfounded decision”.

Mr Sarkozy, who was the president of France from 2007 to 2012, is due to go on trial next year over allegations he took money from Gaddafi to finance his successful election bid.

He is accused of corruption, illegal campaign financing, benefiting from embezzled public funds and membership in a criminal conspiracy. He has always denied all the charges.

The investigation into the allegations was opened in 2013, two years after Saif al-Islam, son of the then leader Gaddafi, first accused Mr Sarkozy of taking millions of his father’s money for campaign funding.

The following year, Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who for a long time acted as a middleman between France and the Middle East, supported the claims.

He told judges he had written proof that Mr Sarkozy’s campaign bid was “abundantly” financed by Tripoli, and that the €50m (£43m) worth of payments continued after he became president.

Years later, Mr Takieddine told French media that in 2006-07 he had personally handed over suitcases stuffed with banknotes to Mr Sarkozy and his chief of staff, Claude Guéant, who later denied this.

But in 2020, Mr Takieddine suddenly retracted his statement about handing over large amounts of money.

This raised suspicions that Mr Sarkozy and his allies – including his wife – might have paid him to change his mind.

In June, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy was found to have deleted messages exchanged with a French businesswoman who was questioned by police over accusations of witness tampering.

Since losing his re-election bid to socialist François Hollande in 2012, Mr Sarkozy has been targeted by several criminal investigations.

In 2023, he was given a suspended prison sentence for trying to bribe a judge, and earlier this year, he was found guilty of illegally funding his 2012 re-election campaign.

He and Ms Bruni-Sarkozy, an Italian-born former supermodel and singer, married in 2008. They had a daughter, Giulia, in 2011.

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The giant plane, an Airbus A340, flew over the skies of Tripoli before landing at Mitiga International Airport near the capital city, pan-Arab Al Arabiya TV highlighted on the morning of 21 June.

Several media outlets quoted statements from Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who was at the airport to see the plane arrive the previous evening.

He said that the plane’s maintenance and other procedures had been completed, with the interim government paying all the needed costs for its return to Libya, the prime minister’s office announced the same evening on Facebook.

Mr Dbeibah said that of the remaining 14 jets, 12 were scheduled to fly back to Libya, while the government was working on the return from abroad of the two outstanding ones.

According to Al Arabiya, Gaddafi’s jet, also known as the ‘Flying Palace’, flew at low altitude over Tripoli’s historical landmarks and circled the area before touching down.

Speaking to journalists about the plane, Mr Dbeibah said “the Libyan people are the ones who will decide its fate” and whether it would be used by the authorities or for other, public purposes, according to Al Arabiya.

He noted that the famous plane’s return to the country was a “positive step for Libya, its security and wealth”, the channel said.

The luxurious plane, described by some as “the Airbus with the [James] Bond villain interior”, has attracted the attention of international media over the past years.

Gaddafi – who led Libya for six decades – and who was known as an eccentric figure who appeared on the world’s stage in his own unique style, was killed in his hometown of Sirte in October 2011 during hostilities triggered following a popular rebellion in February the same year.

Libya’s new governing authority, the Government of National Unity led by Mr Dbeibah, took over power from the previous Tripoli-based government and was sworn in in March following elections earlier this year in a UN-sponsored process.