Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) was sentenced Monday (1st) to three years in prison, including one in a closed regime, for corruption and influence peddling.
The Paris court ruled that there was a “corruption pact” between the 66-year-old president, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and the former magistrate Gilbert Azibert, sentenced to the same sentence.
The former president was convicted of offering an advantageous job in Monaco to then-judge Azibert, in exchange for confidential information about an investigation into which Sarkozy’s party is suspected of having accepted irregular donations from Liliane to the 2007 presidential campaign. Bettencourt, heir to L “Oreal.
Prosecutors uncovered the case by spying on Sarkozy’s phone conversations with his lawyer, Herzog, after he left the presidency, as he investigated another charge that the former president received irregular election donations from Libya , also in 2007.
Sarkozy has retired from politics, but remains influential among conservatives. He will have ten days to appeal the sentence. The former president claims to be innocent and claims to be the victim of a “witch hunt” led by tax lawyers.
He is the second former French president convicted of corruption in modern France. The first is Jacques Chirac, accused of employing friends at the town hall of Paris, while he was still mayor. Chirac died in 2019.