Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to three years for corruption

Nicolas Sarkozy arrives at court in Paris

Credit: ANNE-CHRISTINE POUJOULAT/AFP

Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in prison, two suspended, for seeking to bribe a judge in a huge blow to the former French president, who faces a string of corruption cases.

The conservative 66-year-old is the first French president since France’s collaborationist leader Marshall Philippe Pétain to be handed a prison term.

Mr Sarkozy, who was present in court for the verdict, was found guilty of corruption and "influence peddling".

Prosecutors had called for him to be jailed for four years and serve a minimum of two, and asked for the same punishment for his co-defendants — lawyer Thierry Herzog and judge Gilbert Azibert.

The graft and influence-peddling charges — among several legal cases against Mr Sarkozy — carry a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of €1 million.

Mr Herzog was found guilty of "violating professional secrecy" by receiving illicit information during a call in 2014 from judge Azibert, who was found guilty of concealing the violation.

Both were sentenced to three years in prison, two suspended.  The court said Sarkozy will be entitled to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet.

Mr Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, is to appeal the sentence.

Credit: Michel Euler /AP

He was France’s first modern head of state to appear in the dock.

Mr Sarkozy’s political mentor Jacques Chirac, was also put on trial after leaving office, but was excused from having to attend his 2011 corruption trial because of ill health. Mr Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence over the creation of ghost jobs at the Paris city hall to fund his party when he was mayor.

Mr Sarkozy had denied any wrongdoing, insisting that he had been “dragged through the mud for six years” and had "never committed the slightest act of corruption”.

However the Paris court found him guilty of offering a plum post in Monaco to judge Azibert in return for information on an inquiry into claims Mr Sarkozy had received illicit payments from late L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt during his 2007 presidential campaign.

The state’s case was based on wiretaps of conversations between Mr Sarkozy and his lawyer.

Prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon had told the court that the "devastating effects of this affair strike at the values of the Republic," adding that it had "damaged" the judicial institution, the legal profession and the image of the presidency.

Another lawyer, Celine Guillet, said it had been established "with certainty" that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case via “secret telephone lines” to his friend Mr Herzog.

One conversation "overwhelmingly" showed that Mr Sarkozy had promised to intervene to get Mr Azibert the Monaco post, she said.

However, Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer Jacqueline Laffont, had argued that “we are lightyears away from a pact of corruption” and that the case against her client was a “desert of proof”.

Prosecutors’ arguments that Mr Sarkozy employed the methods of a “hardened delinquent” by using a secret private line under the pseudonym Paul Bismuth to evade detection were rubbish, she contended.

This was the “WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and other encrypted messaging systems” of its day, she claimed. They were just two "brothers shooting the breeze". Besides, the judge never got the plum job in Monaco.

“I have one fear,” she said. “Namely that the former responsibilities of Nicolas Sarkozy but also and perhaps, even more, the procedural irregularities that have targeted him, condemned (prosecutors) to persist on a course they knew was disastrous.”

Legal woes not over

Mr Sarkozy is still facing charges over allegations that he received around £45 million in funding from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi towards his 2007 election campaign, and he is also accused of fraudulently overspending on his failed 2012 reelection bid. The so-called Bygmalion trial is due to start on March 17.

In January, Mr Sarkozy was placed under preliminary investigation for "influence peddling" over a €3 million contract with a Russian insurance company.

The probe by the national financial prosecutor, PNF, is in relation to a contract the Right-winger signed with Russian group Reso-Garaantia. 

He is under preliminary investigation for "influence peddling and concealing a crime or misdemeanour". Under French law, this means judges suspect potential wrongdoing but have insufficient evidence to press charges.