France: ex-president Sarkozy sentenced on appeal for corruption to prison

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced on appeal in Paris to three years in prison on Wednesday, including one year to be executed under an electronic bracelet, for corruption and influence peddling, an unprecedented sanction for a former head of state in France.

The Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the sentence pronounced at first instance, on March 1, 2021, against the former strongman of the French right, who listened to the decision sitting on the bench of the defendants, his jaw clenched.

His lawyer immediately announced that the ex-president was going to appeal to the Court of Cassation. “Nicolas Sarkozy is innocent of the facts with which he is charged,” declared Me Jacqueline Laffont. “We will go to the end of the legal path,” she added, speaking of a “staggering” decision.

The former head of state emerged from the courtroom without making a statement.

Nicolas Sarkozy, 68, is the first former president to be sentenced to prison, his former mentor Jacques Chirac having been given a two-year suspended prison sentence in 2011 in a fictitious job case at the city of Paris.

His historic lawyer Thierry Herzog, 67, and former senior magistrate Gilbert Azibert, 76, were also found guilty of having entered into a “corruption pact” with Nicolas Sarkozy in 2014 and sentenced to the same sentence.

The Court of Appeal also pronounced a three-year ban on civil rights for Mr. Sarkozy, which makes him ineligible, as well as a three-year ban on practicing for Me Herzog.

On December 13, the public prosecutor’s office demanded a three-year suspended prison sentence for the three defendants, who have always denied any corruption.

The former tenant of the Élysée (2007-2012) contested “with the greatest force” during the appeal trial these accusations, reaffirming at the bar that he had “never corrupted anyone”.

This decision was expected when Nicolas Sarkozy will be retried on appeal in the fall in a case of illegal financing of his 2012 presidential campaign, and he is under threat of a third resounding trial: the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF ) on Thursday requested his referral to corrections in the case of suspicions of Libyan financing of his 2007 presidential campaign.

– aka Paul Bismuth –

This Libyan case, which also involves three former ministers of the former president, is indirectly at the origin of the corruption case which has just been tried on appeal.

At the end of 2013, the investigating judges in charge of the investigation into suspicions of Libyan corruption decided to “connect” Nicolas Sarkozy’s two lines. They then discover the existence of a third, unofficial line.

Purchased on January 11, 2014 under the identity of “Paul Bismuth” – a high school acquaintance of Me Herzog – it is dedicated to exchanges between the former president and his lawyer and longtime friend, Thierry Herzog.

Their sometimes flowery telephone conversations, broadcast for the first time during the second trial in December, are at the heart of the case.

For the prosecution, these wiretaps reveal a corruption pact made with Gilbert Azibert, then general counsel at the Court of Cassation, the highest court of the French judicial order.

The latter is accused of having worked behind the scenes to influence an appeal filed by Nicolas Sarkozy in the Bettencourt affair, in exchange for a “boost” for an honorary position in Monaco. The former head of state was indeed charged for a time with “abuse of weakness” concerning the heiress of L’Oréal Liliane Bettencourt: he finally benefited in 2013 from a dismissal “in the absence sufficient charges.

From the outset, the lawyers for the defendants have claimed that these wiretaps are illegal, because they believe they undermine the secrecy of exchanges between a lawyer and his client.

Source: Burkina Information Agency