Former French president sentenced to 5 years in prison in a historical ruling

Paris (AP) – A court in Paris sentenced the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy to five years in prison on Thursday after finding him guilty of criminal conspiracy in an alleged scheme to finance his 2007 campaign with Libya funds.

The historical failure made Sarkozy the first former president of modern France convicted in real time after bars. In a big surprise, the court ruled that the 70 -year -old will be imprisoned despite his intention to appeal. He said that the date of his imprisonment would be decided later, saving the conservative leader the humiliation of being taken from the room of the room full of wives.

The court found Sarkozy guilty of the criminal association at a plot from 2005 to 2007 to finance his winning campaign with Libya funds in exchange for diplomatic favors. He clarified three other positions, including passive corruption, the illegal financing of the campaign and the concealment of the embezzlement of public funds.

Sarkozy denounced the ruling.

“If you absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison. But with my head up. I am innocent. This injustice is a scandal,” he said with his wife, singer and model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, next to her.

“I ask the French, whether they voted for me or not, whether they support me or not, they understand what just happened. Hate really does not know limits,” he said.

Via News

The Court described its behavior as “exceptionally serious” and said that its participation in the efforts to raise Libya’s campaign funds was “capable of undermining citizens’ confidence in public institutions.”

“The objective of the criminal conspiracy was to give it an advantage in the electoral campaign,” the court ruled.

Sarkozy was Minister of the Interior before winning the presidency in 2007. The court said he used his position “to prepare an act of corruption at the highest level.”

Sarkozy described the financing plot as simply “an idea.”

“I am being condemned for allegedly allowing two of the members of my staff to continue with the idea, the idea, of illegal financing for my campaign,” he said.

The Court determined that two of Sarkozy’s closest associates when he was president, former ministers Claude Guyant and Brice Hortefeux, were guilty of the criminal association, but also absolute them from other positions.

The main judge, in a long -term reading hours of the long verdict, said Sarkozy allowed his associates to communicate with the Libyan authorities “to obtain or try to obtain financial support in Libya.”

But the court also said that he could not determine with certainty that Libyan money ended up financing the Sarkozy campaign. The court explained that according to French law, a corrupt scheme can be a crime even if the money was not paid or cannot be proven.

Sarkozy, who was chosen in 2007 but lost his commitment to re -election in 2012, denied all irregularities for a three -month trial earlier this year that involved 11 coacked, including three former ministers.

Despite multiple legal scandals that have cloudy their presidential legacy, Sarkozy remains an influential figure in right-wing policy in France and in entertainment circles, by virtue of their marriage to Bruni-Sarkozy.

Alleged financing of Libya

The accusations track their roots until 2011, when a Libyan news agency and former Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi said the Libyan state had secretly channeled millions of euros in the Sarkozy campaign in 2007.

In 2012, the French investigative outlet published what he said was a Libyan Intelligence Memorandum that referred to a financing agreement of 50 million euros. Sarkozy denounced the document as a falsification and demanded by defamation. The court ruled on Thursday that “now it seems more likely that this document is a falsification.”

The researchers also sought a series of trips to Libya made by people close to Sarkozy when he served as Interior Minister of 2005 and 2007, including his chief of cabinet.

In 2016, the Franco-Lebanon businessman Ziad Takieddine told Mediapart that he had delivered luggage full of cash from Tripoli to the French Interior Ministry under Sarkozy. He later retracted his statement.

That investment is now the focus of a separate investigation into the possible handling of witnesses. Both Sarkozy and his wife received preliminary charges for their participation in alleged efforts to press Takieddine. That case has not yet gone to trial.

Takieddine, who was one of the Coacusados, died on Tuesday in Beirut. He was 75 years old. He had fled to Lebanon in 2020 and did not attend the trial.

The prosecutors alleged that Sarkozy had benefited knowing what they described as a “corruption pact” with the Gadhafi government.

The a lifetime dictator was demolished and killed in an uprising in 2011, ending its four decades in the country in North Africa.

Sarkozy denounced a ‘plot’

The trial shed light on the conversations on the France channel with Libya in the 2000s, when Gaddafi was trying to restore diplomatic ties with the West. Before that, Libya was considered a state of Paria.

Sarkozy has dismissed accusations as politically motivated and depends on counterfeit evidence. During the trial, he denounced a “plot” that said it was staged by “liars and criminals”, including the “Gaddafi clan”.

He suggested that the accusations of illegal campaign financing were retaliation for his call, as president of France, for the elimination of Gadhafi.

Sarkozy was one of the first Western leaders in promoting military intervention in Libya in 2011, when the prinemocratic protests of Arab spring swept the Arab world.

“What credibility can be given to such statements marked by the Revenge Seal?” Sarkozy asked in comments during the trial.

Stripped of the Legion of Honor

In June, Sarkozy was stripped of his Honor Legion Medal, the highest prize in France, after his conviction in a separate case.

Previously, he was declared guilty of corruption and influence to try to bribe a magistrate in 2014 in exchange for information on a legal case in which he was involved.

Sarkozy was sentenced to use an electronic monitoring bracelet for a year. He was granted a conditional release in May due to his age, which allowed him to eliminate the electronic label after just over three months.

In another case, Sarkozy was sentenced last year for illegal campaign financing in his failed re -election offer of 2012. He was accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount and was sentenced to one year in prison, of which six months were suspended.

Sarkozy has denied accusations. He has appealed that verdict to the highest Court of Cassation, and that appeal is pending

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Leicester reports from PECQ, France.