Paris : A Paris court sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison on Thursday after finding him guilty on a key charge in his trial for alleged illegal campaign financing. The court found Sarkozy guilty of criminal association in a plot from 2005 to 2007 to finance his campaign with funds from Libya in exchange for diplomatic favors.
But it cleared him of three other charges – including passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of the embezzlement of public funds. Sarkozy, accompanied by his wife, the singer and model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, was present in the courtroom, which was also filled with reporters and members of the public. With the verdict, the 70-year-old Sarkozy becomes the first former French president found guilty of accepting illegal foreign funds to win office.
Sarkozy, who was elected in 2007 but lost his bid for reelection in 2012, denied all wrongdoing during a three-month trial that also involved 11 co-defendants, including three former ministers. The trial shed light on France’s back-channel talks with Libya in the 2000s, when Gadhafi was seeking to restore diplomatic ties with the West. Before that, Libya was considered a pariah state.
He suggested that the allegations of campaign financing were retaliation for his call — as France’s president — for Gadhafi’s removal. Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders to push for military intervention in Libya in 2011, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept the Arab world. “What credibility can be given to such statements marked by the seal of vengeance?” Sarkozy asked in comments during the trial.
Earlier, he was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling for trying to bribe a magistrate in 2014 in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated. Sarkozy was sentenced to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet for one year. He was granted a conditional release in May due to his age, which allowed him to remove the electronic tag after he wore it for just over three months.
In another case, Sarkozy was convicted last year of illegal campaign financing in his failed 2012 reelection bid. He was accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount and was sentenced to a year in prison, of which six months were suspended.
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