The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy said he would “sleep in jail but with my head held high” after receiving a five-year prison sentence for criminal conspiracy – the first time a former head of state has been sent to prison in modern French history.
The verdict and sentencing followed a trial in which he and his aides were accused of making a corruption pact with the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy to receive funding for the 2007 French presidential election campaign.
In a surprise ruling, the head judge, Nathalie Gavarino, handed down a special form of sentence that means Sarkozy (70), will have to serve a prison term even if he appeals. She justified the conviction and sentencing on the grounds the offences were of “exceptional gravity” and “likely to undermine citizens’ trust”.
The start of Sarkozy’s sentence will be set at a later date, with prosecutors given a month to inform him when he should go to prison.
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The judge also ordered Sarkozy to pay a €100,000 fine.
Sarkozy’s prison sentence was harsher than many expected. As he exited the courtroom, he expressed his anger, telling reporters: “What happened today ... is of extreme gravity in regard to the rule of law, and for the trust one can have in the justice system.”
Sarkozy, who had denied all wrongdoing in court and will appeal, said, “I am innocent, this justice is a scandal,” and that “hatred” against him “clearly knows no limits”.
“Those that hate me this much think they will humiliate me,” said Sarkozy, who was France’s right-wing president from 2007 to 2012. “But what they have humiliated today is France, the image of France.”
The former president was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of corruption, misuse of Libyan public funds and illegal election campaign funding.
As Sarkosy and his wife, they walked out of the court, Sarkozy’s wife, the singer and former model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, walked out of the court, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy grabbed the red cover over the microphone of investigative reporting website Mediapart, which first started reporting on the Libya allegations, and appeared to throw it on the ground.
Prosecutors had told the court that Sarkozy and his aides devised a “corruption pact” with Gadafy and the Libyan regime in 2005 to illegally fund Sarkozy’s victorious presidential election campaign two years later.
The court had heard that in return for the money, the Libyan regime requested diplomatic, legal and business favours and it was understood that Sarkozy would rehabilitate Gadafy’s international image. The autocratic Libyan leader, whose brutal 41-year rule was marked by human rights abuses, had been isolated internationally over his regime’s connection to terrorism, including the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988.
Prosecutors accused members of Sarkozy’s entourage of meeting members of Gadafy’s regime in Libya in 2005, when Sarkozy was interior minister. Soon after becoming president in 2007, Sarkozy then invited the Libyan leader for a lengthy state visit to Paris during which he set up his Bedouin tent in gardens near the Élysée Palace.
In 2011, Sarkozy put France at the forefront of Nato-led air strikes against Gadafy’s troops that helped rebel fighters topple his regime. Gadafy was captured by rebels in October 2011 and killed.
The allegations of a secret campaign funding pact made this the biggest corruption trial faced by Sarkozy. He has already been convicted in two separate cases and stripped of France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honour.
In the first case, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption and influence-peddling over illegal attempts to secure favours from a judge. He was given a one-year jail term, which he served this year with an electronic tag for three months before being granted conditional release. It was the first time a former French head of state had been forced to wear an electronic tag. Sarkozy had to wear the tag into the Paris criminal court during part of the trial over Libya campaign funding.
In a second case, Sarkozy was convicted of hiding illegal overspending in the 2012 presidential election that he lost to the Socialist Party candidate, François Hollande. He has appealed against both convictions.
Despite his convictions, Sarkozy continues to meet and be consulted by key figures on the right and in the centre of politics. He recently met his former protege, the new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, who has yet to form a new government after the last government collapsed in a no-confidence vote this month.
On Thursday, Claude Guéant, who was the director of Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign before being made Sarkozy’s chief of staff and then interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and corruption.
Brice Hortefeux, another Sarkozy ally, who also served as interior minister, was found guilty of criminal conspiracy but acquitted of illegal campaign funding. Both he and Guéant are likely to appeal against their convictions.
Éric Woerth, another former minister who was Sarkozy’s head of campaign financing in 2007 and has since moved to president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, was acquitted.
In a sudden turn of events this week, the Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who told the investigative website Mediapart in a filmed interview in 2016 that he had helped deliver suitcases of cash from Gadafy to Sarkozy’s entourage, died of a heart attack in Beirut, two days before the verdict.
In 2020, Mr Takieddine had suddenly retracted his incriminating statement about transporting suitcases of cash in the Libya case, prompting accusations that Sarkozy and close allies paid him off, something they have always denied. Shortly afterwards, Mr Takieddine contradicted his own retraction.
A separate legal case has been opened into Mr Takieddine’s retraction. Sarkozy, his wife and several others have been placed under formal investigation on suspicion of putting pressure on a witness over Mr Takieddine retracting his allegations. They all deny any wrongdoing.
– Guardian
