French interior minister leaps to ‘honest’ Sarkozy’s aid on final day of corruption trial

Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president is accused of bribing a judge for information on an investigation

Credit: CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock 

French interior minister Gérald Darmanin leapt to Nicolas Sarkozy’s aid on Thursday, calling the former President “an honest man” on the last day of his landmark corruption trial.

Prosecutors this week called for Mr Sarkozy, 65, to be sentenced to a prison term of four years, two suspended, for trying to bribe a judge with a plum retirement job in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.

They asked for the same punishment for Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer and co-defendant, Thierry Herzog, as well as for the judge, Gilbert Azibert. They also said Mr Herzog should also be disbarred for five years.

As defence lawyers summed up their arguments in court in Paris on Thursday, Mr Darmanin, a former Sarkozy protégé, said that he was “too respectful” of the impartiality of French justice to “cast judgment”, before adding: “I believe president Sarkozy.”

“I know that he is an honest man, a man who has dedicated his entire life to political life” he told France Info radio, adding that he offered him his “personal support”, “affection” and “respect”.

France’s first modern head of state to appear in the dock, Mr Sarkozy on Monday denied any wrongdoing, adding that he had been “dragged through the mud for six years”.

"What did I do to deserve this?” asked the conservative, whose wife Carla Bruni attended proceedings for the first time on Wednesday.

French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy denies any wrongdoing

Credit: BERTRAND GUAY/AFP

Prosecutors say he and Mr Herzog tried to bribe 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 is based on wiretaps of conversations between Mr Sarkozy and his lawyer.

Prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon this week 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, Celine Guillet, said it had been established "with certainty" that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case on an unofficial line 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, in her summing up, Mr Sarkozy’s lawyer Jacqueline Laffont, said “we are light years 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.”

The verdict is due at a later date.

Even if cleared, Mr Sarkozy still faces a raft of legal woes.

He remains charged 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.