France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy found guilty of corruption, sentenced to jail
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A French court on Monday found France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy convicted of corruption and influence peddling, sentencing him to one-year imprisonment and a two-year suspended sentence.
He has served as France’s President from 2007 to 2012. He was found guilty of trying illegally to procure information from a senior magistrate in 2014 about an ongoing investigation into his campaign finances.
Nicolas Sarkozy, 66-year-old, is the first President in France’s modern history to have been convicted of corruption and sentenced to jail.
Sarkozy’s co-defendants — his lawyer and longtime friend Thierry Herzog, 65, and now-retired magistrate Gilbert Azibert, 74 — were also found guilty and given the same sentence as the politician. The court found out that Sarkozy and his co-defendants sealed a “pact of corruption,” based on “consistent and serious evidence”.
The court said the facts were “particularly serious” since they were committed by a former president who used his position to help a magistrate who had served his personal interest. In addition, the court said, as a lawyer by profession, he was “perfectly informed” about committing illegal action.
Sarkozy firmly denied all the allegations against him during the 10-day trial that took place at the end of last year. The trial had begun at the end of last year. The judge handed down Sarkozy’s sentence Monday afternoon in front of a full courtroom.
Dubbed the “wiretapping case,” it began in 2013 when investigators bugged phones belonging to Sarkozy and his lawyer Herzog, in the context of an inquiry against Sarkozy.
They found out that the two men promised senior magistrate Gilbert Azibert a prestigious position in Monaco, in exchange for information about an ongoing inquiry into claims that Sarkozy had accepted illegal payments from L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his successful 2007 presidential campaign.
Mr. Nicolas has been charged with passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of stolen assets from Libya and criminal association.
