Anne Lauvergeon

"There was never any question of selling a reactor to Mr. Gaddafi," Sarkozy told France Inter radio, a week after Anne Lauvergeon, Areva's chief executive until 2011, made the claim in an interview on the website of L'Express last Tuesday.

On April 10, the news magazine L’Express published an interview with Anne Lauvergeon, the former head of the nuclear reactor manufacturer Areva, who said Sarkozy had been especially eager to sell a reactor to Gaddafi but that she had opposed this.

Proglio battled with Anne Lauvergeon, the CEO of Areva, the world’s biggest builder of nuclear reactors, over the country’s atomic energy leadership. The spat delayed a 3 billion-euro capital increase Lauvergeon had asked for since 2004 for expansion.

The former chief of France's nuclear engineering company Areva SA (>> AREVA), Anne Lauvergeon, said Monday that she had no plans to join the future French government or to take the helm of French utility company Electricite de France (>> EDF). Speaking on ...