PARIS: A Paris court sentenced former French President Nicolas Sarkozy to 5 years in prison and in a major surprise said he'll be incarcerated even if he appeals, after finding him guilty Thursday in his trial for alleged illegal campaign financing by Libya.
The court said the date of his incarceration will be decided later, sparing the 70-year-old the humiliation of being marched out of the courtroom by police officers and going straight to jail.
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 favours. But it cleared him of three other charges including passive corruption, illegal campaign financing and concealment of the embezzlement of public funds.
The court also found two of Sarkozy's closest associates when he was president former ministers Claude Gueant and Brice Hortefeux guilty of criminal association but likewise acquitted them of some other charges.
Overall, the ruling suggested that the court believed that the men conspired to seek Libyan funding for Sarkozy's 2007 campaign but that judges weren't convinced that the conservative leader himself was directly involved in the funding effort or that any Libyan money ended up being used in his winning campaign.
The chief judge, in an hours-long reading of the lengthy verdict, said Sarkozy allowed his close associates to reach out to Libyan authorities "to obtain or try to obtain financial support in Libya for the purpose of securing campaign financing." He stood as she read out the verdict.
But the court also said it couldn't determine with certainty that Libyan money ended up financing Sarkozy's campaign. Still, under French law, a corrupt scheme can still be a crime even if money wasn't paid or cannot be proven, the court explained.
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. Sarkozy sat in the front row of the defendant's seats. His three adult sons were also in the room.
Sarkozy, who was elected in 2007 but lost his bid for reelection in 2012, denied all wrongdoing during a three-month trial earlier this year that also involved 11 co-defendants, including three former ministers.
Despite multiple legal scandals that have clouded his presidential legacy, Sarkozy remains an influential figure in right-wing politics in France and in entertainment circles, by virtue of his marriage to Bruni-Sarkozy.
Alleged Libya financing
The accusations trace their roots to 2011, when a Libyan news agency and Gadhafi himself said the Libyan state had secretly funnelled millions of euros into Sarkozy's 2007 campaign.
In 2012, the French investigative outlet Mediapart published what it said was a Libyan intelligence memo referencing a 50 million-euro funding agreement. Sarkozy denounced the document as a forgery and sued for defamation. The court ruled Thursday that it "now appears most likely that this document is a forgery."
Investigators also looked into a series of trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy when he served as interior minister from 2005 and 2007, including his chief of staff.
In 2016, Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart that he had delivered suitcases filled with cash from Tripoli to the French Interior Ministry under Sarkozy. He later retracted his statement.
That reversal is now the focus of a separate investigation into possible witness tampering. Both Sarkozy and his wife were handed preliminary charges for involvement in alleged efforts to pressure Takieddine. That case has not gone to trial yet.
Takieddine, who was one of the co-defendants, died on Tuesday in Beirut. He was 75. He had fled to Lebanon in 2020 and did not attend the trial.
Prosecutors alleged that Sarkozy had knowingly benefited from what they described as a "corruption pact" with Gadhafi's government.
Libya's longtime dictator was toppled and killed in an uprising in 2011, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.
Sarkozy denounced a plot'
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.
Sarkozy has dismissed the allegations as politically motivated and reliant on forged evidence. During the trial, he denounced a "plot" he said was staged by "liars and crooks" including the "Gadhafi clan."
He suggested that the allegations of illegal 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.
Stripped of the Legion of Honour
In June, Sarkozy was stripped of his Legion of Honour medal France's highest award after his conviction in a separate case.
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.
Sarkozy has denied the allegations. He has appealed that verdict to the highest Court of Cassation, and that appeal is pending.
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