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PARIS: A French court found former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty on Monday (March 1) of trying to bribe a judge and influence peddling, making him the second head of state of present-day France to be convicted of corruption.
This is also the first time in modern French history that a former president has been convicted of corruption.
Sarkozy was sentenced to one year in prison and two years in conditional prison. The court said you have the right to request to be detained at your home with an electronic bracelet.
Prosecutors told the court that the 66-year-old, who led France from 2007 to 2012 and remains influential among conservatives, should be jailed for four years and serve at least two.
Sarkozy’s co-defendants, his lawyer and longtime friend Thierry Herzog, 65, and now-retired magistrate Gilbert Azibert, 74, were also found guilty and received the same sentence as the politician.
The court found that Sarkozy and his co-defendants struck a “corruption pact” based on “consistent and serious evidence.”
The court said the events were “particularly serious” given that they were committed by a former president who used his status to help a magistrate who had served his personal interests.
Furthermore, as a lawyer by training, he was “perfectly informed” about the commission of an illegal action, the court said.
During his testimony, Sarkozy said that he was the victim of lies and denied having committed an act of corruption.
“Never. I never abused my influence, presumed or real,” he told the court in December. “What right do they have to drag me through the mud like this for six years? Is there no rule of law?”
Prosecutors allege that Sarkozy offered to secure an excellent job in Monaco for Judge Gilbert Azibert in exchange for confidential information about an investigation into allegations that he had accepted illegal payments from L’Oreal’s heiress, Liliane Bettencourt, for his campaign. presidential 2007.
This came to light, they say, while listening to phone conversations between Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog after Sarkozy left office, in connection with another investigation into alleged Libyan financing of that 2007 campaign.
Azibert, at the time a magistrate in France’s highest appellate court for criminal cases and knowledgeable about Bettencourt’s investigation, did not get the job in Monaco.
Prosecutors are seeking the same punishment for Azibert and Herzog, who are on trial alongside Sarkozy.
Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, is the only other postwar president of the Fifth Republic of France to have faced trial after leaving office.
Chirac, who died in 2019, was convicted in 2011 of presiding over a ghost job system at Paris City Hall for political cronies when he was mayor of the capital. With a two-year suspended sentence, Chirac escaped serving a jail sentence.
